Mind Tricks
by InteriusMoribus
Summary: She defeated the Emperor and brought peace to the realms, but Kitana could not bring herself to kill her own sister. Instead, she took Mileena under her wing and gave her a home to call her own. As a new member of the Edenian royalty, Mileena is now free to live on her own terms. But can the past be so easily forgotten?
1. Our Shadows Dream

0

_"My winding hall of memory,_

_Lined with portraits of you"_

"Wake up, Sister."

A touch on her shoulder casts off the veil of sleep, and the day rushes in. She cannot see the light coming until it blinds her. Cannot feel it until it burns.

This is the way she knows the blade which pierces her abdomen.

Arms go numb. Legs, too. Body inert.

But _she_ is still trapped inside.

She forces her body to cry out, because the Pain is not a dream anymore. Not like it used to be. Now it is real, and it erupts from inside of her.

This frightens her.

This Immobility. The not knowing until it is there, until it is too late.

The blade burrows into her stomach, stops mere inches from her spine. It rests there, waiting, radiating frost. Fear. Her numb fingers grasp at the hilt, begging it to go away.

Then the blade fans out, nearly bifurcates her at the waist. Again there is Pain, that flaring crimson, so acute now, but there is also Force. The person inside of her shrieks, but her body only gasps pathetically.

Her eyes, still unseeing, drown in tears.

It is only when the fanned blade pulls out that the girl inside her and her own body reconcile, become one, and she finally sees, finally feels the blood spilling from her stomach. And yet she can only see the void: where the blade came from, where she will go, for it is calling her name.

And in that stillness there is a silhouette, a silky outline of a person she feels she knows. An afterthought of a ghost.

The blade shoots out from the black, toward her eye.

She cries out: "Sister!"

But the word only comes out in blue, tattered ribbons. Stripped of meaning, echoing forlornly into the abyss, a hollow realm beyond her reach.

Her and her body separate before the blade reaches her pupil. The girl in her chest falls back asleep.

Back into the world she came from.

* * *

I

_"Our bodies sleep – our shadows dream"_

"Sister."

Her first word, or her last?

_What does it mean?_ she thinks. _To have one? To be one?_

She does not understand. Does not care to. But there are some things she does understand. And, in understanding them, these things are _hers_.

She understands the jade sensation of wet grass on her bare feet. She understands how the sky, alive with fiery hues, curves down and vanishes beyond the Edenian mountains. She understands how the lowlands below the great palace slumber beneath an eternal mist, for she watches them every day, unfailingly. And when the sun goes down, she watches the fog thicken, creep over the black landscape like a thing alive. It does something to her, but she cannot decide which part of her feels it. Her heart? Sister once told her she had one. She believed her sister then. Still does.

But she does not understand, as she approaches the edge of the cliff overlooking the courtyard, why the two men sparring down below become larger as she gets closer, and the sky does not.

She hides behind one of the trees perched on the cliff's edge, presses her body against its rough bark, and looks down upon the courtyard. The evening canvas of Edenia stretches out before her, like a picture resembling memory – the view from the royal palace. She watches the two men exchange blows, dressed in deep mahogany gis. But they cannot see her. The lavender mask concealing her face makes her illusory – even she believes she does not exist.

A strong roundhouse kick to the chest sends the shorter man with the close-cropped hair to the ground, landing hard on his back. The woman imagines the color of the pain: a dense cobalt, spreading along his spine. He yells through his teeth and his partner laughs in triumph, offering his hand. The fallen man accepts the hand, stands up, his posture bent from the pain. His partner pats him on the back unhelpfully, and yet both of them smile.

"I'd thank you not to break my back before a real conflict calls for our skills, Addas," says the loser, coughing.

"Don't tell me you cannot handle a bit of roughhousing, Raphael," laughs the winner. "It is all in good fun."

Raphael scoffs, limps his way back to his side of the mat.

She takes notice of Addas's bald head, silhouetted in the light of the setting sun. His shadow is long, statuesque; it reaches along the length of the mat and consumes Raphael.

"I am serious," says Raphael. "We are yet young. We must apply the wisdom of Masters Irnest and Raiden, lest we rush headlong into foolishness."

Addas widens his grin, loosens his stance - a sign that the training is over. "You are paranoid, my friend. You have not changed. The Queen would not see Edenia enter needless war so soon after the death of her surrogate father." He shrugs. "And with whom would we fight? Our allies in Earthrealm? Or the remains of Outworld's forces? Surely neither would be inclined to participate in yet _another _game of Mortal Kombat."

Raphael, too, slackens his stance. "You are right. I do not doubt Queen Kitana's wisdom. She shows reason where her father did not." He crosses his arms, ambles toward Addas. "She is more like her mother in that regard."

"And yet you do not sound reassured." Addas's expression is suddenly sullen, serious. He seems to know full well the source of Raphael's anxiety.

She leans in as their voices soften.

"How can I remain assured of Edenia's stability," whispers Raphael. "When the Queen keeps fragments of a past best forgotten at her side?"

They do not turn their heads - they already see her out of the corners of their eyes. Despite her discretion, despite the small cluster of trees in which she hides, they watch her just as she watches them. She feels them looking at her Tarkatan eyes, brooding in still silence; feels them appraising the garb of the Edenian royalty she wears; feels them looking at her mask, and knows that despite its function, they are not fooled. Perhaps they are wiser than she first thought.

_No, they do not see me,_ she thinks. _They fool themselves into thinking I am here._

"We'd best not talk about such undesirable things here, Raphael," says Addas, gesturing toward the steps leading down to the city. "Let us return home, where the carnivores of the royal family do not hound our every step."

She watches them make their way down the endless staircase leading to the lowlands, disappearing into the mist.

Disappearing, unlike their words, sharpened like arrowheads in her direction.

The primal urge to descend upon them as they spoke about her, to toy with them, taunt them, and eventually kill them, drives her fingers into the hard bark of the tree. The image of the scene is clear in her mind; why did she not act it out? Her other hand hovers near the sai tied in her sash, her fingers clawed around its hilt as she watches the fighters vanish.

The moment she realizes she's hissing is the moment she notices that there is someone behind her.

She draws her sai, directs its pin-point edge at the woman's face.

The woman's eyebrows jut up, eyes widen, the rest of her face concealed, like hers, by a cerulean mask: standard attire for the Queen's personal retainers.

"I beg pardon, mistress," the woman stammers, bowing. "The Queen requests your presence in her study within the hour." The woman waits for her mistress to lower her sai. She does not. "Actually…she requests that you come as soon as possible. Um, when you are able, that is."

She wisely shuts up. A moment later, her mistress slightly lowers her sai, and her eyebrows slacken from their scowl.

The retainer girl bows again. "Lady Mileena," she says, and steals away, steps charged with fright.

Mileena watches her disappear into the gardens. Disappear, as is the tendency of so many Edenians. Like the very mist from which they emerge. She regards the sai held fast in her grip. Its presence, suddenly real, sends a painful shock of shame through her. The weapon slips from her fingers and fumbles into the grass.

Whatever she might have said to the girl, those words are gone for now. And so she leaves. Picking up her sai, she disappears into the palace which overlooks all of Edenia.

* * *

Evening light filters through stained glass windows, painting the hallway in myriad hues of lavender, azure, and jade. To Mileena, these colors are as music, amorphous, her synesthesia composing somber melodies in her head. She feels naked walking down this carpeted path, so brazenly out in the open. The golden ceiling arches high above, as if the palace had originally been built to house a gargantuan saurian race. The sheer scale of it diminishes her, enough that she can trick herself into thinking she is invisible. But the friction of her bare feet against the carpet fosters its own sound, its own sensation, which always brings Mileena back to reality.

And it is always annoying.

"Lady Mileena."

The words ring out from the left and right. The two guards flanking her bow deeply, having emerged while she had been distracted. Their eyes are tightly shut. She knows it is out of fear. She does not respond, despite a nagging urge to speak, for once, instead of act or attack. But they are nothing. If she lets them be more than that, she would not be able to survive here. Unfortunately for Mileena, the word "survival" has lost its meaning, like so many other words taught to her in those eons before her life began.

Her entrance into the Queen's study is soundless, much to Mileena's delight. She adores spying upon her sister, tricking her. Kitana stands before the fireplace, her arms crossed. She speaks to herself, or perhaps to another, conjured by her own imagination. Mileena can hear little of what she says, fragments of words like "Earthrealm" and "watch" slipping through. She inches along the velvet carpet, watching her sister's shadow dance along the opposite wall, cast there by the fire's light. Despite the shadow's statuesque posture, it still flickers, wracked by motion and light.

Shadows always project unease, disquiet. Mileena knows this well, for that is one of her earlier memories, one of the few she has never once doubted. Her own shadow watches from the other end of the wall, and it, too, dances in silence.

"I would prefer speaking with Raiden directly," says Kitana, seemingly to herself. "Though his efforts are to our advantage, Edenia cannot commit to helping Earthrealm without knowing how many of my father's forces still remain."

Silence. Mileena inches closer, inspects her sister's profile, her masked face lapped by the firelight.

"Very well," says Kitana. "One more thing, Sir Cage. 'Kitana' will suffice from now on. 'Babe' will not."

'Sir Cage', wherever he may be, does not respond. Mileena notices the shadows on the wall become startlingly still, as if they are paintings, separated from the bodies that cast them.

"You have been sneaking around the courtyard again." Kitana meets Mileena's stare out the corner of her eye. "You are not as discreet as you think, Mileena."

"'Sneaking'?" says Mileena, pretending to be shocked. "Why, Sister, I do not _sneak_! Others _sneak_. I _watch_."

"And others watch in kind." Kitana turns to Mileena, arms still folded. Her fingers are wrapped around a silver amulet, laced with a string of miniature pearls. "I understand if you do not trust the people here at the palace, but that is no reason to stalk every passerby on the grounds. Your handmaiden, in particular, is growing more nervous than usual."

Mileena presses her fingers to her mask in contemplation. She saunters toward her sister and says, "Who…watches me?" She raises her eyebrows to indicate a grin. "If you are so trusting, that is."

Kitana's mask shifts - a concealed smile. "A friend, if you want me to be specific."

"Friend…?" Mileena tilts her head to one side. Such a confusing word. It is not alien to her – she knows its common meaning, but has never heard Sister use it like this. "And who would a friend be, Sister?" She enunciates the word carefully, as if it is her first time saying it.

Kitana's expression shifts from one of amusement to startled confusion. Mileena is surprised; is the question really so strange?

"Jade, if you really must know," says Kitana. "There is little point in hiding it. She was looking for you and I called you here to address that fact."

"Jade is a…_friend_?" Mileena's eyebrows perk up as she says the name. She twirls a lock of her own hair around her finger. "Hmm…no, I think Jade is only Jade, sister."

Kitana squints. "Er…what?"

"Well, you see, she is a girl, kind of like you, but not exactly. She walks, talks, and dresses like a girl. She is very pretty like a girl, she can fight, and she can be very cross. She is not funny, but then again most girls are not funny. That all makes her a person. And that person is Jade. And Jade is Jade. And if Jade is a person who is Jade, then that means Jade is Jade is Jade, so…"

She tilts her head to the other side, the lock of hair tightly braided around her finger. "What makes her more than that?"

Kitana gawks at her, but Mileena only stares back, honestly intrigued.

"Mileena, I did not call you here to get trapped in another one of your vicious questioning circles. When did you learn to be so inquisitive, anyway?" Mileena shrugs, her eyes squinted in a smile. "Jade should be here in a few moments. You can ask her yourself."

Mileena gasps excitedly, clasps her hands together.

"'Jade is Jade is Jade'…ugh, it's like talking to a child," whispers Kitana as she turns back toward the fireplace. "Actually, it _is_ talking to a child."

"I can hear you!" chides Mileena. She takes her finger out of her hair, and the braid comes undone like a dark parasol, twirling and dancing, until it falls still along her cheek.

* * *

The minutes come and go in flickering waves, the fire casting their two shadows along the wall, as if painting a portrait of the two of them. Kitana tends to a bundle of scrolls laid on the short table beside the fireplace. Curiously, it only takes her a few seconds to peer over one before moving onto another. She must be really fast at reading, thinks Mileena, or they are just pictures. The mystery is enough for Mileena, whose eyebrows perk up with quiet curiosity as she watches from afar.

And she is the first to notice when, several minutes later, Jade enters from the opposite doorway, dressed in her green assassin attire. She pauses at the entrance and nods respectfully to Kitana, who returns the gesture.

"I trust your rounds went well?" says Kitana, rolling up the last scroll and setting it on the table. Jade nods. "That is good. I have reviewed the intelligence gathered by your agents, and have decided that we need a small reconnaissance team for this next task…"

She continues her explanation, the words fading into incoherence to Mileena, whose attention slowly strays to Jade. Mileena buries her hands in the headrest of the couch she is standing behind, her head cocked to one side as she tries to decipher, visually, this particular woman whom Kitana so easily calls a "friend."

In the midst of their conversation, Jade steals a quick glance over to Mileena, then quietly says to Kitana, "So you've decided to bring her here."

"Are you surprised?"

"I'm only surprised that you could coerce her into doing anything. She is very…elusive, Kitana. And not in the manner I would prefer."

Mileena leans forward on the couch. "Oh, don't be rude. I _can_ hear you, you know," she giggles. The two of them glance at her awkwardly. "Hello, Jade," sings Mileena, drawing the last word out into a whisper. Kitana and Jade look visibly disturbed, even with their faces half-concealed. This is Jade's usual expression whenever she chooses to speak with Mileena, which is a rare occurrence in itself.

"You do not _look_ out of place, Mileena," says Jade, gesturing toward Mileena's robes. "I will say that much."

The compliment is unexpected, but somehow relieving - Mileena cockily raises a shoulder and giggles mischievously. A gift from Kitana, the lavender dress, influenced by the kimono style popular in Earthrealm, had been intended to make Mileena blend in as a member of the aristocracy. Her way of wearing it off-the-shoulders, however, infuriates Kitana, who often insists that Mileena is "doing it wrong" and should learn how to "dress properly". Jade's comment obviously does not help Kitana's case, if Kitana's glare is any indication.

"You will need to change into something more suitable, Mileena," says Kitana. "I need you and Jade to head to the forest in the south before nightfall."

Jade's eyes widen. "So you _are _sending us by ourselves? You were not joking when you said 'small reconnaissance team.'"

"I was planning on having you and Jade investigate the borders of Earthrealm and Outworld, respectively," says Kitana to Mileena. "But my contact in Earthrealm has just informed me that things seem stable on his end. I am redoubling our efforts and sending you both to investigate one of the more active regions of Outworld insurrection."

"Who is your contact in Earthrealm?" asks Jade. "Master Raiden, I presume?"

Mileena grumbles at the mention of the name. Images of lightning bursting from someone's hands, followed by a stinging pain on her skin.

"Raiden is…distracted," says Kitana, taking notice of Mileena's reaction. "It is difficult to explain. I do not have all of the details, but it seems that nobody has seen him since the death of Shao Kahn. I received this latest report from Sir Cage, who told me as much."

Jade raises an eyebrow. "Johnny Cage? You mean the lech?"

"Indeed."

"But I thought he was an idiot."

"He _is _an idiot," says Kitana. "But as far as relaying information goes, he is competent enough. He has this annoying obsession with the word 'babe', though…"

Mileena approaches the two of them, her shadow on the wall joining theirs in a fluid dance. "And who are we to pursue, Sister?" Her voice teems with anticipation. She feels an elation which was not present before; that kind of excitement which is only fostered by directive, by a task. She feels, somehow, alive, more so than she has in the past few lazy days. Jade notices this, and eyes her with more suspicion than usual.

"I cannot tell you the whole story now. There is not enough time," says Kitana. "I have enclosed the details of the mission to Jade, so I suggest you leave it to her to worry about that. Suffice it to say there are still some people who would see our realm threatened, even in this new era of peace. If we wish to keep that peace, we must root out such corruption."

"There is supposedly a band of mercenaries in the forest to the south," says Jade. "My scouts believe that they are agents from Outworld. If that is the case, then we must deal with them swiftly."

"That is all we can say," says Kitana. She then glares at Mileena for a moment, the connection between the two of them nearly tangible. "Control and discretion, Mileena. Despite what you may feel, this is not a game."

Mileena shrugs, her eyes squinting in a concealed smile. "So serious! You are no fun, Sister!"

She flutters her eyelashes at Jade. "I shall prepare myself. One moment, please…" she coos, and then slinks out of the room and into the hallway leading to her room, her robes trailing behind her in a dancing sway. When she feels she's disappeared from view, Mileena leans up against the wall, concealed in shadow, and peers back into the study. She sees Kitana and Jade exchange glances of equal parts frustration and reservation.

"Watch her, Jade," says Kitana. "Please. This effort cannot fail. We are taking a heavy risk sending her with you. I do not want anything to happen to her."

"You do not even have to tell me," says Jade, taking her leave.

Mileena does not know what drives her sister to say this, to command that she be watched, followed, but it frustrates her. She wishes she had more time to think about this. But more of a mystery is Jade, who evades definition, even if Kitana calls her "friend." Mileena only knows that Jade is gone, and will be waiting for her, watching, for reasons that escape her.

In return, Mileena will watch back, and she'll have her game after all. And so she steals into her chambers, the rules of her contest already brewing in her mind.


	2. Still Concealed

II

_"Our masks hide our smiles, our frowns –_

_But even without, I am still concealed"_

The candles bathe her room in amber light, casting shadows along the walls. Imaginary landscapes, rising and falling in great mountain ranges, treetops, grandiose palaces – all silhouettes, but no less real to Mileena.

These, too, are hers.

Every night, in those long minutes before she falls asleep, Mileena immerses herself in that landscape. She imagines herself as a shadow, running through those ephemeral forests, standing atop those ethereal plateaus, walking along the shores of those ghostly lakes. A world of her creation, dedicated to her and her alone. Anyone else she comes across is simply an imaginary friend, conjured on a whim. Sometimes she whispers narrations to herself about "Mileena's Adventures in the Shadow Lands", dictating her own deeds to her empty room. She will deepen her voice when she imagines herself coming across a man, and heightens it when encountering another girl. She growls when she faces Tarkatans, and hisses when she chances upon silly people like Raiden.

The shadow land is there, waiting for her. But Mileena cannot pass through its gates tonight.

Not yet.

Her room is a disaster zone of cast-off clothing, sewing materials, blankets, hand-crafted dolls, scrolls of parchment with crude drawings of teddy bears and make-believe girls, and piles upon piles of sais and daggers. All strewn about without a care.

Mileena quickly closes the door behind her, slips out of her robes, and tosses them aside, into the maelstrom. The window is slightly ajar, but she hardly notices – nobody would dare peer in on _her _space. Nobody in Edenia has that kind of nerve.

She hums to herself delightedly as she begins donning her magenta assassin attire, her eyebrows perking up in anticipation.

_What kind of game shall I play with Jade tonight? _she thinks, unable to contain her excitement. It is almost too much to think about, but that is half the fun, isn't it? _It has to be one that I know she will be terrible at. But then that leaves so many to choose from!_

Once she is dressed, she walks over to the body-length mirror across from her bed. There, she examines her lavender mask, appraises the dark markings weaved into its borders. These flourishes are designed to resemble fangs, a carnivorous symbolism that causes her prey to believe that they see the maw of death itself in the shadows. She likes it. Deceptive and deadly.

She then slips it off and examines her face in the mirror. She runs a finger along an elongated Tarkatan fang, flicks it with her tongue, testing its sharp edge. She does this with every tooth, with the care of a craftswoman, as if she is appraising a weapon rather than a part of herself.

She opens her mouth wide, her eyebrows raised high – the closest she can ever come to a smile.

"Sister wants Jade and I to go for a stroll out to the forest tonight," she says. "She was _very _serious about it, too. She said, 'Control and discussion, Mileena! I am a big girl so I am allowed to tell you what to do!' Then she made another one of her mean faces. Like this."

She turns to the lone teddy bear sitting on her nightstand. She furrows her brow, places her hands on her hips, and bares her fangs in mock severity.

"She does not want us to 'mess anything up'," she says, employing air quotes. "She does not think we can do what she says unless we do not have any fun at all. Stupid, isn't it?"

The bear looks back at her lifelessly.

"What!? You _agree_ with her? Do not be silly! I mean, just look at me!"

Mileena brandishes her sais, twirls them in her hands, and points them threateningly at the teddy bear. "Do I _look_ like someone who does not know what she is doing?"

A pin-drop silence.

"Exactly!" She slips her weapons back into their hilts with excessive flair. "It is Jade who needs my help, not the other way around. That is why I think Sister is sending me with her. But I am going to show Jade who is boss whether Sister likes it or not." She walks up to the teddy bear, takes it in her hands, and stares deeply into its black, beady eyes. "Do not tell Sister I said any of that, though," she whispers, her voice suddenly serious. "If she comes in and asks, tell her I said she is the best sister I have ever had and I would _never _say anything mean about her. Tell her that even if she tortures you.

"And then tell her to get out of my room or you'll explode, okay?"

She forces the bear to nod.

"Good! Thanks, Teddy," she says, replacing the bear on the nightstand and patting it on the head approvingly. Satisfied, she lifts her mask up over her nose, and once again she feels ethereal, untouchable. With the introduction of the mask, she is no longer entirely there. She is a pair of eyes that see, that watch, but cannot be seen in turn. Those who claim to see her are liars: they see only shadows, afterimages. And if they see the real her, it is only in their final moments. This will be her advantage over Jade.

She quietly locks her door and snuffs out her candles with practiced finger-pinches. Then she thrusts the window open and looks down into the sea, its velvet waters roiling in the cold Edenian dusk. She steps out onto the windowsill, looks out at the endless expanse, that point where the ocean meets the sky. Where they intertwine, exchange colors, and at some point, far off in the distance, become one.

And then she disappears.

A split second later, Mileena is on the palace's roof, sprinting in the direction of the setting sun. Her footfalls are silent; the guards patrolling the rooftops do not sense her, but that is not because they are fools – though there _is _that – but because they cannot see the invisible.

She stops in her tracks a mere second before reaching the edge of the roof. Believing herself to be out of sight, she perches on the very tip of the palace's eave, and from there she overlooks the grand courtyard, the endless steps leading down to the village, the Edenian sunset. It is all there, waiting for her. Her gaze sweeps over the terrain, the green and amber hues of the landscape. The mist slumbers in the lands below, and the palace seems like an island in the middle of an endless foggy ocean. Perfect seclusion.

Into the stillness she whispers:

"Where _are_ you?"

She remembers the sensation she felt earlier: how she could feel the color of the wet grass on her bare feet. It seems like something Jade would like, given her name. Mileena wonders if Jade, too, can feel color the way she does. Either way, she concludes that Jade must be hiding among the trees, or out on the grassy knolls far in the distance. She casts her gaze over the landscape, and yet despite her keen eye, Mileena cannot find her charge.

This strikes her as wrong. She furrows her eyebrows, leans further forward, her silhouetted profile resembling a feminine gargoyle perched on the palace's eave. Jade is supposed to be here, or at least somewhere out there. She is supposed to be _real_. She wants to catch Jade unawares, ensnare her in her game before she has a chance to escape.

The minutes pass. "Where _is_ she?"she whispers, clenching her teeth as her anger rises.

"Here."

Mileena nearly topples over.

She quickly regains her balance and turns about, meeting Jade's condescending gaze.

"Looking for me?" asks Jade sarcastically. "On the roof, of all places. What a strange girl."

"You cheater!" screams Mileena, pointing at Jade accusingly. "You are not supposed to win like _that_!" Before Jade can respond, Mileena vaults off of the roof, dropping down the palace's tall front wall, level by level, as easily as if walking down steps. She lands lightly upon the ground, but does not move just yet. She listens for Jade. Indeed, she's shouting Mileena's name from the rooftop, like a scolding sister.

Perfect.

Mileena dashes into the small cluster of trees overlooking the valley, from where she had earlier spied the two sparring men. But it is not enough to simply hide, she thinks. She must turn the tables on Jade, and so she swiftly vaults her way up the tallest tree she can find, and perches herself atop its highest branch, like a vulture. From there, she watches, waiting for her second chance.

But despite her quick thinking, her body trembles with rage.

_How did she do that? _she thinks, hands digging into the bark of the branch on which she's perched. _That is one of my secret spots. How did she know I would be there?_

She feels for the word to describe the sensation of Jade intruding upon _her_ space. _Her space!_

Intruder? No. It lacks venom.

Interloper? No. It implies competence on Jade's part. Jade isn't supposed to be competent.

She decides that the word does not exist. When she tries to think of it, all she sees is an image of Jade's condescending eyes. Mileena shuts her eyes, but Jade is still there. She wants to scream, but the sound of soft staccato footsteps stays her breath.

Jade enters the clearing, her staff still tied to her back. Seeing her soothes Mileena's anger somewhat: Jade at a disadvantage. Vulnerable. Unable to see Mileena, though Mileena can easily see her. That is how it should be.

_Take that, you cheater_, thinks Mileena, wanting to shout it but thinking better of it. _I do not play with people who break my rules._

Jade does not move, only casts cautionary glances here and there, but somehow manages to avoid looking up. After a few moments, she finally calls out: "You have already forgotten what Kitana said, haven't you? I suppose I should not be surprised."

No response. Mileena grins mischievously, imbibing in Jade's frustration.

"This is not a game, Mileena!"

That gets her. That slight drop in composure. It compels Mileena to pounce.

She drops down from the treetop and lands directly behind Jade, without so much as a sound. In that instant, she thinks about what she could do to anger her most, or humiliate her, anything to break that annoying stoicism. Prove that she is right about her.

But not yet. She'll save the humiliation for later, when it will be most potent. Better just to toy with her for now, let her know what she has gotten herself into.

"Who says that we cannot have a little fun…" whispers Mileena as she slides her hands onto Jade's shoulders.

Jade lashes out angrily, as if Mileena's fingers are aflame, but Mileena is too fast and quickly teleports behind her. From there, she grabs Jade's wrists from behind and whispers into her ear:

"…while we are out doing errands for my sister?"

Jade quickly slips out of Mileena's grasp, taking several steps back, wincing furiously. "If you want to have 'fun'," she snaps, "then find fun in eliminating our targets. I have seen you fight, Mileena. You are very capable when you focus. Your sister and I need you to be focused for now."

Mileena crosses her eyes. "But I do not _like_ focusing, Jade."

"If Kitana believed you were not fit to help me, she would have left you to play in your room," says Jade. Mileena notices that Jade cannot maintain eye contact with her. Something Mileena can exploit, perhaps? "Be grateful she is giving you this chance to prove your worth. I know I would not be so generous. Now come, we must reach the forest before nightfall."

"You are even less fun than Sister!" teases Mileena, slowly circling Jade so as to prevent her from leaving. "What worries you so? We are only hunting down a few little mice in the forest." She dons a sad, guilty expression, tilts her head to the side. "Can we not make it…entertaining?"

She dreamily twirls around as she pronounces that last word.

But Jade only sighs and pushes past her, out onto the path leading away from the palace. Laughing, Mileena follows, believing herself to have regained the advantage in her game after being cheated out of the first point.

_This will be so easy_, thinks Mileena. _I was right, Sister! Jade is simply that: Jade. There is even _less_ to her than meets the eye. A boring girl like her is hardly a match for me._

* * *

They proceed in silence. Mileena contents herself with following Jade down the winding steps, toward the sea of mist. There are some deviations here and there – a path that branches off to the south halfway down the steps, an unmarked path through a small forest, a cavern concealed behind a waterfall – but Mileena knows these hidden trails as well as she knows how to breathe. They have become part of her.

But never before has she traversed these paths with anyone other than herself.

Jade walks upright, her bo staff at her back, her stride confident and disciplined. Mileena, by contrast, walks casually, her movements fluid like water. She wrings her hands together; her fingers tremble excitedly as she imagines tearing nearby flowers out of their bushes. Jade's hands only sway at her sides.

Mileena's gaze wanders from Jade's hands and falls upon her hair, which swings to and fro with every stray breeze, with each stride. The motion is hypnotic. Mileena's face cannot settle on one expression: excitement, skepticism, anticipation. Every little nuance she notices in Jade brings about its own array of nameless emotions, whose colors are alien, unfamiliar. Every time she notices these emotions and tries to apply a name to them, she sees only pictures of Kitana, her face shaped by those same feelings. Sometimes she sees pictures of things that _should _make her excited or angry…but they do nothing, except cause indifference. They are not as interesting as Jade.

This is Kitana's fault, she thinks. Sister never had the chance to answer her questions. Not to mention the lack of details about their mission, which now only adds to Mileena's curiosity.

_But Jade knows. She is hiding something_, Mileena thinks.

But she does not want to know what it is just yet, because dodging the questions, dancing around the fact, will only make the game more fun. She giggles to herself, but this only causes Jade to turn around and shoot her an impatient glance. Neither of them says anything, instead they resume walking after the tension has passed. When Mileena giggles to herself a few minutes later, Jade reacts the same way.

_Is this the game I want to play?_ thinks Mileena.

No. The real game will come in due time.

This back-and-forth of "giggle vs. stare" goes on for the next hour. It is good, Mileena thinks. It gives her time to mull over Jade. But eventually her giggling devolves into full-out whispering to herself, and this Jade cannot abide. She abruptly stops in her tracks, whips around, and storms up to Mileena, her eyes brimming with fire. She raises her hand as if to strike – Mileena, taken by surprise, tries to dodge.

But then Jade stops, retracting her hand. "Never mind," she says, warily turning back around. "I do not even want to know. It is probably not worth my time, anyway."

"But Jade, maybe you _do_ want to know!" says Mileena, finally springing her trap. "Maybe you think it is very _in-_teresting! What I am thinking, that is."

Jade stops again. "Mileena, what does that even mean?"

"It means that I think that you think I think that what I am thinking is _in_-teresting enough for youto think about!"

Jade blinks rapidly, nearly falls over. Mileena yelps in delight at the sight of it, but Jade recovers quickly, placing her hand on her head as if it has been cracked open. "Alright. I get it," she says to herself. "She wants to waste time playing her mind games. Of course she does. This was a bad idea. I told Kitana that she would be in-"

She cuts herself off. Her eyes go wide, realizing her mistake. Mileena saunters over to her, her ears perked up as she tries to suppress a squeal of delight. Jade's expression goes blank, but only for a second. Mileena moves in to coerce her into divulging whatever she had been about to say, but Jade pre-empts her:

"Alright, Mileena," she says, her voice suddenly calm. "You want to make a game out of this. Is that correct?"

Mileena giggles. She would say "obviously!" but the word is far from adequate.

"Maybe Kitana and I did not give it enough thought. Now that I think about it, you might be onto something after all."

"Well, of _course_ I am!" says Mileena proudly, gleefully clapping her hands together. "It sure took you a long time to realize this, Jade."

"Yes, Mileena. It was hard to grasp your…intuitive way of thinking," says Jade cheerfully. "Alright, then. If you want to make a game of this, then let us do just that."

Mileena wants to smile, but does not feel as excited by this as she thought she'd be. In fact, she finds herself reflexively backing _away_ from Jade. "Yes. Let us play, if you are…um, interested."

Jade does not move from her spot. Instead she raises a single finger and says "But there is one condition. If we are to play, then we must play by _my _rules!"

The earth falls away from beneath Mileena's feet.

This should be easy to argue against, but the words do not come. Mileena tries to speak but only incoherent noises come out, shapes of words that might reflect anger, confusion, but they are only fragments. She tries to gesture but can only claw her hands, point them at Jade or at the ground. The emotion she feels is new, intrusive.

_What is this?_

"How does that sound, Mileena?" Jade's voice echoes from an impossible distance.

Mileena swallows hard, jabs an accusatory finger at Jade. "But…_I'm _the one who demanded it be a game in the first place! You cannot just make the rules however you please! That is supposed to be my… I mean, you are not supposed to be able to-"

She chokes on her words, shocked at the tears suddenly forming in her eyes.

_What is this!?_

"Sorry, Mileena, but I believe I just made the first claim to rule-maker," says Jade, displaying a cockiness that Mileena has never seen before. Another trap! Mileena wants to pounce on her, get rid of her, remove her from her sight and her mind. "So if you are set to make this a game, I shall tell you the rules."

"I…no, Jade, you don't—!" She stops, trying to keep her composure.

"But first," says Jade, sassily turning around and starting back on the path. "You must race me to the forest's edge."

And at the moment she finishes her sentence, she's disappeared into the Edenian winds, leaving an emerald aura trailing along the path.

_She is fast, too? _Mileena blinks rapidly, dumbfounded._ She's…fast…too._

"No, no, no! _Stupid _Jade!" she screams as she, too, disappears, following her opponent, who is so unfairly keen on changing the rules of her own game. She doesn't care about the tears anymore, much less where they came from – she just lets them fall. She will hunt Jade down, she decides, and beat her at her own game. And then remove her from her sight, tear her face from her memories.

But first she must be caught.

* * *

Mileena recognizes this place. It is where the shadow lands were born.

She should know: she has memorized every single aspect about the area. She knows at what point the mountains emerge from behind the treelines, from what peak the sun usually rises, at which angle to best see the sunlight's sparkling constellations on the great lake. She has come to know from what distance one can see the individual windows on the great Edenian palace, now far off in the distance. She looks for these things. She has memorized them, which makes them hers. They are to waking what the shadow lands are to dreams.

But she does not acknowledge any of it this time, for there is a trespasser in her lands.

Not the mercenaries she has been assigned to kill. They are inconsequential. They will be killed and cast away into the waters of memory. She will not disobey her sister.

It is Jade who she must catch.

Not because she wants to kill her. Not really. She wants to know. She wants answers that she knows only Jade can give. Because Kitana will not. She knows that now.

Eventually, after several minutes of running, Mileena sees the forest in the distance. Black treetops reaching toward an amber evening sky. A malignant horizon. The sight of it is as familiar as her own face in the mirror. The path she is on snakes its way into the trees, where she knows it will eventually segue into grass and finally disappear entirely. Like a snake with its head cut off.

No sign of Jade. Again.

This strikes Mileena as very, very wrong.

_Did I win? Did I beat her? _she thinks, doubled over, trying to catch her breath. _No, Jade is stupid. She will have tricked me into thinking I won. I hate her so._

Once she has caught her breath, Mileena steps off the path and begins combing the area for signs of her companion. If she is right, and Jade _does _have a natural affinity for the color of grass, then she could be anywhere.

_Is this what Sister meant? _she thinks, squinting so as to block out sunlight. _When she called Jade a 'friend'? What does it mean to be a friend if Jade is one? Do you have to be cruel and unfair? Do you have to tease other girls and make them cry, and tell them they cannot make their own rules?_

Mileena's gaze skirts along the grass as she walks through the field. The familiar sensation, the color of the grass, returns, brushing up against her legs. It does not seem to mind that she's furiously tearing the longer blades right out of the ground.

The color has a taste to it. Like cool water in a desert.

_Does a friend hide things from other people? _she thinks, glancing all around her. _Do they get angry when you try to have fun, and then try to have fun when you get angry?_

It has a smell to it, like morning mist.

_Do friends talk with sisters behind other sisters' backs?_

It has a sound to it, like harp-strings plucked in a wistful andante.

_ If a friend is all of those bad things, and Jade is a friend to Sister, then what does that make Sister?_

The color has a name, but Mileena could not pronounce it if she tried. The word is familiar, but a part of her does not want to use it that way. It is not supposed to mean something good like this. It is supposed to be bad, deceptive, illusory…

_And what does that make me?_

"I see you are confused."

Mileena slowly turns around. She does not want to see her, but Jade is there. She is unmistakable in the sun's light.

"You…are _stupid_," says Mileena, her voice trembling with anger.

"Oh, be quiet," says Jade. She motions toward the forest's edge, where the black mist tumbles onto the dead grass. Mileena follows her there, her eyes fixed firmly on the ground ahead of her. Both of them stop when they reach the nearest tree, and crouch down so as not to be detected. One could not look into the woods without seeing anything but black, anyway. Even during the day, the place is nearly as dark as the void itself.

"Now that we are here, I think it is time we go over the rules of the game," says Jade, to which Mileena grumbles. "I will be brief, since our targets are right inside the forest. We do not want to alert them to our presence before we descend upon them."

Mileena lets the words pass over her. She does not care what Jade has to say. Her only desire is to look at her face and tell her that she is wrong, tell her everything that just occurred to her out in the grassy fields, tell her that her rules are stupid. But when she looks up into her eyes, Mileena sees something that was not there before.

A spark. A glimmer of light in her irises.

"You are enjoying this," whispers Mileena, unable to look away. "You are having fun.

"…_Why?!_" she hisses.

But Jade simply shushes her, putting a finger to Mileena's mask. Mileena notices Jade's own mask become taut. The tell-tale signs of a smile.

And it is terrifying.

"Now, Mileena," she says. "Listen very carefully. Rule number one…"


	3. Ashes of Ages

III

_"Remember for me that portrait -_

_Buried beneath the ashes of ages"_

The forest is the only place in this part of Edenia that does not belong to Mileena. She never once thought to make it hers.

This is due to its reputation as a twisted maze of gnarled, decaying trees and constricting vines, steeped in a sea of blackened fog. A mass grave for foolish wanderers. Mileena admires it, but even she knows it is like a Venus flytrap: a place where someone of her caliber would expect to thrive, and yet still be eaten. The mercenaries are either wise or foolish to hide in such a place, especially this deep inside, let alone find a grove in which to camp.

But where Mileena had expected disarray, a scene of frightened men trying desperately to hold rank, there is instead rigid order. The mercenaries have transformed their hidden grove into a makeshift clock-face. All twelve of them stand in circular formation around a roaring campfire, their bodies stone-still, their shadows melting along the trees and tall bushes.

Despite the frenzied dance of these shadows, the scene is frozen in a still frame, like one of the many elaborate realist paintings in Kitana's quarters. It is even more impressive from where Mileena is perched, atop the highest tree overlooking the clearing.

She can hear them speak if she leans in far enough, but the words are formless, like trying to differentiate between galaxies and stars using only one's eyes. The voices are deep, severe, the vocal fluctuations stern and military. Mileena would not be surprised if they, too, were Edenians. But what is strange about this is that while they do speak, there is no indication that their words are directed at anyone in particular - each man is tidally locked to the campfire, arms crossed, standing erect. Instead they seem to speak to the campfire itself, as if their words alone keep it alight.

This is not the rag-tag group that Mileena had envisioned.

_I knew Sister and Jade were hiding something from me,_ she thinks, pressing her tongue against the back of her signals to Jade, perched atop another tall tree on the opposite end of the grove, and raises one eyebrow, indicating her interest in their quarry. Jade squints - the meaning of this gesture is lost on Mileena, but she suspects that it means that it is still Jade's game, and thus she must pay attention.

_Ah yes, 'patience'_, thinks Mileena, rolling her eyes. _Of all the rules you came up with, Jade, that one is the stupidest of all_.

She signs to Jade, her fingers trembling in anticipation of the game. If she is going to acquiesce to Jade's demands, she prefers to have it done with instead of being forced to stew in her own agony. She hopes her hand signals convey something along the lines of _Give the signal already, so I can show you what it means to lose at your own game!_

But Jade just rolls her eyes and shrugs , the message apparently not translating. She turns her focus back toward the grove, but only for a second; she catches Mileena's eye again and signals for her to pay attention to what is happening down below. Mileena notices that the scene has indeed changed, albeit subtly. The campfire has dimmed, and the mercenaries, just a few moments ago fixated on its light, have all directed their gazes to the ground at their feet. Each mercenary clasps his hands together in prayer. The possible correlation between the dying fire and this change in attitude is not lost on Mileena. She is fascinated.

"Listen," whispers Jade, her voice weaving through the light wind. "My scouts told me of this."

"Shush! They'll hear us!" hisses Mileena.

"They will not. Not in their current state. They are enraptured, lost in their spell."

"Spell? They are sorcerers?"

"Perhaps. It is magic, but I do not know what kind."

_Then these are no ordinary mercenaries_, thinks Mileena, feeling that familiar flare of excitement in her chest.

"One scout described it as a ritual," continues Jade. "Another said it was a holistic prayer. For now, make of it what you will."

Mileena is not exactly inclined to follow _any _of Jade's suggestions, but she does not have to: the mercenaries' voices have become much louder.

In the clock-face grove, the man standing in the "one" position raises his head, looking directly at the campfire. His brothers remain immobile as the wind dies. Mileena, reflexively, holds her breath. Then, after a stillness, the mercenary speaks, his voice reverberating as if through a vast cave:

"Time. That which was, that which is, and that which will always Be. Before the I, the We, the All-Presence of Life, there was only Time. In it I was submerged. And there I waited in the Embryo of Ages, the Cocoon of Centuries, the All-Chrysalis, anticipating the passage of eons, waiting for the chance to become more than a possibility. The chance to Be."

He lowers his head, falling silent. In response, the man standing where the "two" should be raises his head, and continues:

"Thus was I blessed with the Chance to Be. Born into flesh, my destiny the Mundane, I swam for the surface before I could even see. All I knew was the sense of drowning in still waters. But in that moment, when clarity seemed out of reach, a sensation emerged from within. This was the rapture of birth. The emergence of Lucidity in Time."

The third speaks:

"And with Lucidity came Peace. The sensation of drowning gave way to the knowledge that I was submersed in Time, the surrogate father of Man. There was no word for this knowledge – I only knew it to be True. That sense that I was suddenly alive, due to something I could not describe."

"Time then delivered to me its bountiful gifts. With each new blessing, with each new day, I learned what it was to speed through its waters, to seek out Others and find both kinship and rivalry. In exploring the world birthed from Time, I learned what it was to Be. This was clarity…or so I believed it to be."

"But as I aged, I grew arrogant, and Time itself began to slip away from me. In my hubris I had forgotten what Time had done for me, the gifts it had offered. I descended into complacency, and through the years, the decades, believed myself to be impervious to its effects. Eventually, I forgot about Time altogether."

"But Time's hand never leaves our shoulder. It is there, in the Past, in the Present. And it will always be waiting for us in the Future, no matter how distant, no matter how unpredictable that Future may seem. This I learned when I first met Death's cold embrace, and the forsaken hand of Vengeance brought Time's unrelenting tide rushing up to claim my soul."

"Time is, was, and will always be Death. I learned this in a way I could not have during waking Life. It is a lesson we cannot learn until we are furthest away from clarity, when we are blinded by the decadence Life offers us. And thus with the lucidity of a man imbibing in the world's senses for the first time, I fell back into Time's still waters. The world I came from. And there I learned what I should have known all along…"

"…That though we may live in the Present, believing ourselves to be aware when we truly act as blindly as an eyeless hound…"

"…That though we may choose our recollections based on preference, creating a mosaic of our fondest memories so that we may hide from those filled with despair…"

"…And that though we may foretell for ourselves a false Future, based on hopes and ideals with no foundation save our own desperate attempts to escape the restraints of the Now..."

"…We can never escape the Past. We may hide like mice in the Present, but it will come for us, whether it is in waking life or in dreams. And thus our Future is always decided, even before we can conceive of it. Even before we can learn to fear it. I learned this when I returned from the realm of the Dead and emerged upon this soil with the wisdom of a man reborn."

"And thus we are, each of us, forever the servants of Time," concludes the last man. "And we must do as it commands, lest we forget what it means to Be who we are."

The last mercenary bows his head low, his hands clasped in solemn prayer. The fire dims further, until it is but a flickering ember lashing out from beneath the firewood.

Mileena, finally remembering where she is, closes her eyes, unable to look away from the scene. She turns to discuss this with Jade, to ask questions, to try to remember what they had come here for, and what they are going to do. But when she opens her eyes, she sees only an empty branch. Jade is gone.

_More tricks! I knew it!_

And so Mileena vaults off of the treetop and into the tall, thick brush surrounding the grove. The game has begun.

* * *

The men have hardly moved since the conclusion of their prayer. They have turned away from the campfire, each of them staring out into the black forest, their hands crossed behind their backs as if in waiting. They give no indication that they are aware of the two assassins in the bushes.

Observing them, garbed in night-black, Mileena thinks of a game she once saw Kitana play with one of her serving girls: a board checkered in black and white, upon which stood a dozen or so carved marble pieces. Kitana's pieces had been white, her opponent's black. Mileena, sitting on the couch and drawing a picture of the two of them in one of her sketchbooks, had started watching them halfway through the game. After her sister had won, Mileena asked why Kitana did not reach over the board and kill her opponent.

"Mileena, when you play a game with someone else," Kitana had said, "it is not always for keeps. Nor does losing have to be, so…permanent."

Mileena had dismissed her sister as silly and drew a moustache on her in the final version of her sketch. It looked so laborious at the time, but seeing these men now, Mileena has become curious about the nature of that old game. Another question for Sister.

She roughly shakes her head, dislodging herself from memory. _No, concentrate, Mileena_, she thinks._ We mustn't let Jade get the first point!_

But first Mileena decides to test the waters: she crawls an inch at a time toward the man nearest her, tries to study his face, learn what kind of countenance would produce those mystifying words spoken moments ago. However, his identity is concealed beneath his black hood. She cannot even make out the contours of a nose, nor the glint of a half-closed eye. The eyes are her favorite tell-tale signs, her impetus for initiating a strike. The fact that they are closed means he is either confident, unaware, or resigned to his fate.

And even now, as she positions herself right beneath his nose, he does not detect her. She is invisible, ethereal, just how she likes. And this is more than enough to trigger that crucial sting of adrenaline in her heart, that electric sensation in her fingertips. In one fluid motion she reaches out, grabs onto his robes, and pulls him into the bushes.

No sound. Zero resistance. It is as if his body is made of air, and he is but a vision.

She quickly pins him to the ground, and within moments she is perched on his chest, sai in hand. She looks for that glint in his eye, that pale shimmer of animal _fear_, of _mortality_. But his eyes remain closed.

_He doesn't want to see me_, she thinks, her permanent smile stretched to its limits beneath her mask. _He just said he does not fear death, and yet look how tightly he shuts his eyes when it falls upon him!_

One cross-slash slices his throat open. One clean motion, like running a hand through water.

At this point she would imbibe in the victory, savor that rush that only comes when taking the life of another. But now the pulse of the game is alive in her heart, like high-tempo music pumping throughout her system. Its sonic will draws her back toward the grove, leaving her fresh kill among the leaves. She crouches in the brush again, and takes stock of the playing field, now reduced by one.

Rather, reduced by two, for one has vanished in her absence.

_Drat! _thinks Mileena, hissing. _She thinks she can keep up with me! We will see about that!_

And thus Mileena is taken over by her own carnivorous instincts, that primordial hunger for the hunt. She slithers through the bushes toward her next prey, her adrenaline rush dispelling the darkness of the forest. When she peers straight up into the face of her next victim, and when he does not look down at her, she feels yet another spark in her chest, an injection of a narcotic thrill. Her left hand cuts through the air, wraps around the collar of his gi. The sai in her right hand slices through his throat. She pulls him into the bushes before his blood even begins to spurt from his mortal wound.

It is nearly the same thing she did with her last victim, but here…she is more _present_. It is the opposite of numbness. Every movement and action makes more sense than it usually does. It is as if the world is acquiescing to _her_ desires, instead of the other way around. She feels his blood run down her arms as she lays him down among the leaves. Her body inhales sharply without her consent, overwhelmed by that primal predatory sense. Her body has taken over, while her inner self has become drunk on the thrill of the game.

There is a word for this. She knows it all too well.

Joy.

* * *

The killing.

It is what makes the game _everything_ for her.

The approach. The cutting. The reeling in. The disposing.

The repetition.

In this state, Mileena doesn't think in words, but in colors, in musical notes, her every thought a solar flare. Somehow it is easier this way, this total lack of absence of the words; this is the way it _should_ be. The killing is simple. Fun.

Had it always been this way? If so, why had she lost that feeling in the first place?

The questions come, but they are fragile. She does not care. There is only the Now.

But Mileena has not lost track of the score. If anything, her state is even more lucid than it is normally. If she is most aware of anything at the moment, at this moment when everything is so vivid, so charged with consequence, it is the score. And somehow, Jade is keeping up, four to four. That Jade could match Mileena's heightened, predatory state seems laughable. More trickery? It is more than possible.

_Everything_ is more than possible in this moment.

The blood of four men drips from her sais, striking the leaves in a steady _pit-pat _rhythm.

She notices that the scene is almost artistic in its symmetry: two men on Mileena's side of the grove and two on Jade's. A perfect setup for a razor-thin finish. But a tie would be unacceptable. To be Jade's equal would not be enough. It would be an insult.

She wonders, as she approaches her soon-to-be fifth kill, her blades at the ready, if she is having fun, or if this is something more. It is starting to feel like fun's deranged sibling. The spark in her chest changes colors, warping into a sensation she has never experienced before.

But as she pulls the mercenary in, jabbing her sai through his throat, she thinks it can _only_ be fun. She knows it to be. But strangely, feeling the blood from his wound trickle down her arm, it is not there anymore. The primal charge is there, sending liquid fire through her veins, but she cannot think of the word "fun" without it not only seeming ineffective, but _wrong._

Is this another one of Jade's tricks? What makes killing these men anything less than fun?

Unless it is _more _than fun.

_No_, she thinks, the words finally returning. _Winning is the only thing more fun than fun itself._

Mileena returns to her hiding spot after laying the man's body on the grass. She watches the three remaining men, watches them stand with their hands behind their backs and not caring about their missing comrades.

She watches one of them disappear into the forest. Into Jade's clutches.

Five to five.

Something snaps within Mileena. Like an arc flash behind her eyes.

_This is it, _she thinks. _I must defeat her now or not at all._

Mileena springs from the bushes, fueled by her desire to win. Her demonic hiss breaks the two remaining men from their meditation, and for the first time since the game began, they turn to her. They only seem to acknowledge her presence rather than prepare to fight back, but there is no opportunity to see if this is true, for Mileena has already torn the throat out of the nearest one with one bare hand. His blood, running between her fingers, is oily black in her adrenaline-laced vision.

She cannot even begin to describe the taste, the smell, the sound of thatcolor.

The remaining mercenary's face is concealed, just like his brothers', but Mileena has no doubt that he is feeling it: that most important element of the game, the catalyst which drives her: the Fear.

Laughing maniacally, Mileena tears off her mask and rushes toward the man. But he does not move. She leaps onto him, brandishes her spare sai, and stabs his neck repeatedly before digging her fingers into his throat and tearing as hard as she can. But before she lets him fall, she stares into the black space beneath his hood where his face should be, brandishes her Tarkatan teeth, and hisses like a reptilian beast possessed.

But there is no fear. He simply bleeds in silence.

Disappointed, Mileena removes her sai from the man's neck and jumps off of his body. He unceremoniously collapses onto the forest floor, without so much as a dying gasp.

She cannot believe that it was not there, that scent which sustains her, which is so interwoven with the idea of this kind of game that its absence almost discredits the entire thing. It makes any potential victory a pyrrhic one. Worthless. He must be a beast, she thinks, or something less. Some pathetic order of creature which cannot feel such a basic emotion.

But this is irrelevant, because the game is over and a winner must be decided. Mileena counts on her fingers, feeling that sense of anticipation unfurl within her, that nascent joy.

Her score is six to Jade's four.

Time resumes its normal pace as the adrenaline-drive seeps out of her. In its place is a bright blue glow in her chest: complacency. Pride. Victory. Her shrill laugh echoes throughout the forest.

"You may make the rules, Jade," Mileena calls out into the black expanse. "But know that I will _always_ win!"

She is met with silence. No doubt Jade is ashamed at her loss. Mileena does not blame her; after all, Jade had been foolish enough to go against her in the first place. To think she believed she could win, even after Mileena allowed her to make her own rules! Mileena cannot wait to tell her sister that she was right about Jade, that she cannot be anything more than what meets the eye, just like how these men were less than they first seemed, for despite their words, their articulate prayers, they are now dead.

"Oh, don't be mad!" calls Mileena, picking up and donning her mask after a few moments of quiet. She saunters over to the area of the grove in which Jade had made her last appearance. Giggling, she says, "If you want, I can _try_ not to brag! I'll still make fun of you in front of Sister, though! I believe that was one of your 'rules', was it not?" She gleefully employs air quotes as she pronounces "rules".

Silence.

Mileena leans in, looking over the low brush in which Jade has hidden. "This is so precious. Do you want me to feel sorry for you? I do not feel sorry for losers, Jade! It is your fault you lost!" She titters maniacally, hugging herself in joy.

Then, after thinking about what she just said, she raises a finger, her eyebrows tilting upward. "…Well, maybe I do feel bad. Maybe just a little! But you can come out now! I promise I won't laugh. Much."

Even the wind is absent. Eventually it dawns on Mileena that she is only speaking to herself. The weight of the stillness begins to suppress her.

"Um, Jade? Where did you go?"

And suddenly a new feeling overwhelms her, a color she has never conceived of before. Without thinking, Mileena panics and propels herself over the bushes. She frantically searches the area, feeling out of breath, but to no avail – her partner is gone again. But it is a different kind of "gone", one that feels worse than usual.

"Jade!" she cries, looking all about her, unsure what to do. And yet, in her sudden desperation, Mileena feels something else inside of her.

That familiar sensation of wet grass against her leg…

It manifests as a beacon shining from deep within the forest. It seems impossibly distant, as if it is a trick of the eyes rather than a real thing. But more important is the emerald aura leading toward that light, like a cosmic trail for Mileena to follow.

She runs through the forest, toward that emerald spark, hoping desperately that she will not lose sight of it. That feeling growing in her chest, that acknowledgment of Jade's absence, chokes her, makes it difficult to breathe, to run. But her directive is strong: she weaves through the forest as she would through her own shadow lands.

_She usually disappears just to tease me, to make fun of me_, she thinks, carefully making her way down a steep slope. _Why does it feel worse this time? Why am I scared?_

She does not think these words, but feels them all the same. That emerald sensation she has pursued begins to grow stronger, more real, until finally she can see it shining behind a dense line of trees – another grove? She does not care. She will get there, even if it feels like swimming toward a surface impossibly far away.

Mileena bursts through the trees and into another glade, this one just as spacious as the one in which the game had taken place. The emerald light has vanished. In its place is a static scene, rendered stark in the din of moonlight.

"Jade!" cries Mileena when she sees her partner alone, leaning against a far-off tree, covered in blood.

She starts toward her, feeling an unstoppable desire to somehow express to Jade the horrible feeling in her chest, which she cannot find a word for but desperately craves to know. "Jade, what are…what happened to you?"

It is only when Mileena has halfway crossed the glade that Jade looks up, her face weary and flecked with blood. When she sees Mileena, her eyes widen in horror. "Mileena, stop!" she shouts, weakly thrusting out a hand. "Do not come any closer!"

Mileena tries to obey, but it is too painful to simply stop dead in her tracks – her desire to somehow explode with the feeling inside of her is overwhelming. It feels more like a sickness than an emotion; it compels Mileena to move toward her. "Are you…mad at me? Because I made fun of you for losing? Are you mad at me, Jade-"

"Mileena, listen to me! Just get out of here, now!"

"But-"

From behind, the sound of heavy feet falling on dead leaves.

Mileena slowly turns around.

"Mileena, _don't look! Get out of here!_" Jade's voice rings out from across an impossible distance.

In her peripheral vision, Mileena can already see the black hood, the black robes, the black armor, that entity garbed entirely in the hues of the void. And then she can see those white eyes, pupiless, reflecting the space where the soul should be. They stare out of the darkest corridors of memory.

His voice echoes in her mind:

"Fear me."

She reaches for her sais, but her body has gone numb. Her vision has failed. Mileena is gone before she can think of anything to say.

* * *

A plane of pure, starry white unfolds before her, inhabiting the space where the world should be. A silvery expanse, like the interior of a crystal, reflecting light at random. In the center of the field of white is the man in black. He, like his dead cohorts, remains still. And watches her.

Mileena watches back, but that is all she can do. His vision alone paralyzes her.

She tries to imagine where she is, or how much time has passed since she came here. Then, as if triggered by her thoughts, a full spectrum of colors begins to radiate from the man's form. The colors – all unfamiliar, distant, hues she had never thought existed - dip and curve into strange contours, slowly weaving a scene from the emptiness, eventually taking the shape of a landscape. Something stirs within Mileena – an old feeling, something she did not realize she had hidden away in the first place – but she cannot speak, cannot move, cannot put it into context.

And then she says, against her will:

"Sister."

The white noise surrounding the man in black crackles as the scene expands further. The image slowly becomes more real – pieces of furniture, wall decorations, rays of light. Mileena can make out the rough outlines of two female bodies, one moving, one lying still on a bed. They seem to regard each other. A wordless conversation? The one lying down begins to stir. She sits on the edge of the bed. The other woman sits down beside her.

They embrace.

"My sister is…" says Mileena, the words coming out on their own. "My sister is my—"

The scene dissolves before she can finish. The colors swiftly retreat back into the man's body as he doubles over as if in pain, and soon, the entire field of white begins to crack as if made of glass.

A second later, it shatters, and the forest returns.

And with it, Jade. Mileena watches as her partner drives her knee hard into the man's side, and then delivers a strong roundhouse kick to his chest. This sends him staggering back a few feet, but he does not lose his footing. Jade then lunges at him, preparing to strike at his face with her staff.

But he is too quick, and counters with a punch to her stomach, followed by an uppercut to her chin. It is only when he casts her unconscious form off to the other end of the glade that the feeling returns to Mileena's body.

And, with that feeling, rage.

"_You _are no longer part of the game!" she shrieks as she advances toward the man, Jade's prostrate form lingering in her field of vision. "_You _must not exist! For Jade _or _for me!"

He assumes a defensive stance, unlike his rigid companions back in the glade, as Mileena sprints toward him, brandishing both sais. She charges straight toward his punch, but dodges to his side at the last second. Taking advantage of his flank, she jabs one sai into his ribcage. The man growls in pain and reaches for her head, but Mileena tumbles away, positioning herself directly behind him. She then leaps toward his back, anticipating digging her sai into the back of his skull.

That is when another body erupts from his back and crashes into her; she yelps in surprise as her back hits the forest floor. Mileena attempts to get up, but the second body quickly grabs her by the neck and pins her down on the forest floor. She tries to find some angle from which to stab him, but to no avail: a galvanizing fist plows into her cheekbone, scattering her vision into a mosaic of bleeding colors. Her sai slips from her hand, her fingers stiffened by the strike. The pain sears through her face in pulsing cobalt waves, and she can do nothing to prevent the shadow from grabbing the fabric around her neck and pulling her up to meet his gaze.

The shadow tears off her mask.

Through her blurry vision she can see that its eyes are closed.

Not closed, she realizes. They are simply black. No soul. No substance.

She hisses, but the sound is pathetic with the shadow's hand around her neck. She then closes her eyes and trembles, waiting for him to finish her, anticipating some seismic blow against her face or chest. And yet the shadow does not strike her. Instead, it leans in, its black imitations of eyes staring deep into hers.

Out of the corner of her eye she can see the original body approaching. He, too, stares at her, his eyes still ghostly white against the black backdrop of the forest. He leans in, along with his doppelganger, and says, in a voice that sounds as if it is submerged:

"Remember what it is to Be, Mileena."

She tries to hiss, but her voice has dried up, evaporated.

"You will not have another chance."

And all at once, the shadow disappears into thin air, and Mileena falls to her knees. She coughs violently, gasping for breath as her vision swims. When she looks up, the man and his shadow are gone, as if they were never there.

Unreal.

It hurts to move at first. Even more so to look around. It is only through concentrated effort that Mileena is able to stand up, able to find Jade lying on her back in the dead grass, able to limp over to her. As she approaches, Mileena can see the large bruises, the cuts, the rivulets of blood running down Jade's arms. Fortunately, she is not bleeding out – the blood is a remnant of a battle already lost. Mileena suddenly finds herself kneeling over her, watching her face, the upward slant of her eyebrows, signifying what must be pain. Or loss.

Because she lost the game, Mileena thinks, or does loss have another meaning she is not aware of? She does not know if Jade would have the answer to that, or if she would even tell her if she asked.

But maybe Kitana would.

Jade comes to after a few moments, groaning as she slowly opens her eyes. She looks at Mileena with an expression that Mileena does not entirely understand. It occurs to her that she has not said anything. Is she supposed to?

"…Jade?" she offers lamely.

They regard each other, their wounds, but say nothing.

Then Mileena, acting on another alien impulse, offers her hand. But Jade waves it away and slowly gets up by herself, though it is obvious she does so in great pain. "Don't," she says. She eventually staggers to her feet, and Mileena rises up along with her. "Don't help me. I am fine."

_No, Jade, this is not fine_, thinks Mileena. _Fine is when you win. Fine is when you have fun. This…this is not fine at all. _This realization causes a deep sadness in Mileena, which only partially translates to her unmasked face.

"Are you..." starts Mileena, moving closer to Jade. Her own vision is still fragmented, hazy. But that horrible feeling from before, which caused her to run through the forest like that, remains, and must be expressed somehow. "Does it hurt? Can I…um…make it better?"

"I am fine," snaps Jade, moving away from Mileena, avoiding eye contact as she brushes herself off. "Please, do not do anything."

But Mileena is unconvinced, and that deep carmine sensation in her chest has become overpowering. Almost against her will, she puts her hand on Jade's shoulder, trying to understand if Jade is hiding something else. Trying to understand what kind of loss she is feeling. "But Jade, I do not _think_ you're okay—"

Jade slaps Mileena's hand away.

She points at her threateningly, her eyes flaring with anger. "Do not touch me! Do not do _anything_, Mileena!" she shouts.

Mileena stares.

"I told her," snarls Jade, her pupils darting all around, never focusing on Mileena. "I told Kitana that bringing you would be a mistake! That you would do far more harm than good! She did not listen because you are her _sister_! She did not listen to reason!"

Mileena lifts a finger. "But-"

"No. Don't you _dare _speak to me. Mileena, forget your inane games and just _try _to understand. This mission ended in failure. The target, if you have not noticed, has escaped. He knows our tactics, our approach. He knows of you, which probably means he knows of Kitana, too. He _knows _everything, when instead he should be dead! Do you know why?"

Mileena shakes her head, trying to clamp her mouth shut as tight as possible out of shame.

"Do you know why our mission failed?"

"…No?" mumbles Mileena.

"It is because of you. Things are even worse than they would have been had we not even bothered to come here, because of you. If you had not insisted we make a game out of a serious mission with _serious_ consequences, our target would be dead. Instead, he's…he's…" Jade sputters incoherently, burying her face in her hand, obviously at a loss for words. Then she looks back at Mileena and simply says, "Forget it. I have had enough of this. I am leaving."

She abruptly turns away, walking back in the direction they came.

Mileena hopes Jade did not notice her holding back tears. But she follows all the same, though she still cannot think coherently. Too many questions that will only bring wrong answers. So she does not ask. She simply follows from a distance, all the way back to the Edenian plains.

Once they reach the border of the woods, Mileena calls out, "Are you going back to Sister?"

"Yes," hisses Jade.

"Are you…going to tell on me?"

"I am going to tell her what a fool she is. If you must follow me, do so in silence-"

"Jade, what did I do wrong?"

"…Or I swear I will kill you myself," finishes Jade before resuming her march toward the palace.

Mileena does not follow her. Not immediately. For a few moments she stands at the edge of the forest, watching Jade from behind a tree, watching her walk unbalanced, injured, so unlike that confident stride from before. Her vision is still hazy and liquid from the mercenary's punch, but it does not obscure Jade's figure slowly heading up the path. She remembers the question she asked Kitana: "What makes Jade more than Jade?" Now, she is afraid to know.

But even worse, she does not understand.

_That man would have killed you_, thinks Mileena. _Instead, you are still alive. We both are. There will be another chance, won't there?_

"What did I do wrong?"

When Mileena does follow, it is in total silence, save for a few post-cry hiccups. The familiar Edenian landscape, from which her shadow lands derive, reintroduces itself in a midnight palette as she walks along the path. But she does not acknowledge it. Instead she keeps her eyes on the ground, her body shivering at the sudden onset of cold. Mileena would rather not dream tonight.

But knows that she will.


	4. Little Secrets

0

_"Walk with me on the limbic shores –_

_Where memory's tide rises and falls"_

She runs her finger through the still waters.

Listens as each ripple plays its own note.

She laughs. It is so simple. But the more she thinks about simple things, the more amusing they become.

She adores the way the sunlight glitters off the tremulous surface. So much so that she tries to write her name in the water, so that it, too, may be decorated in those sparks of light. But each time she tries to spell out a letter, the water washes her progress away.

She is confused.

She tries again. It is easy to run one's finger through the water. It does not resist. It is simply there, waiting to be played with. But once again it rushes over her written word, as if eager to reject her.

She is angry.

She stabs her finger into the water, furiously etches her name before it can be erased, hoping to beat it at its own game. But by the time she spells out the last "a" in her name, it is all gone.

"No!" she wails, slamming her fists into the sand. "Why won't it work?"

"What are you doing?" says the voice from behind her.

"I am trying to write my name in the water. It is much harder than I thought."

"You have such a long name. It is hard enough to write as is."

"I know. But it is not working! I have tried and tried, but the water ruins it before I can even finish!"

She slaps the water's surface, accidentally soaking herself through. Her music is ruined.

"Now, now," says the voice. A hand reaches out and gently takes her wrist. "You cannot make something out of water – it does not work that way."

"But look! It takes whatever shape it wants! Look how it flows, how it sways up and down! It even sings when I swirl it around! It is so beautiful, and yet when I try to do something meaningful to it, it refuses. Why won't it let me?"

The hand releases her wrist, points at the water's trembling surface. "Let it be. Let it come to a rest first."

She does not want to. But the voice knows best.

And once the water has become still as a sheet of glass, she asks: "Now what?"

"Look into its surface. You shall see."

She trusts the voice, and so she peers into the water, eager to see what she had failed to discover for herself.

And there, reflected in its crystalline surface, embossed with glittering sunlight, is a girl's face.

Looking back at her from some distant world.

She reels back, horrified.

"Who is _this_?!" she shrieks.

Or at least tries to.

For the blade has already found its way into her back, its cold silver digging into the walls of her heart.

A color comes to mind.

An image of a person she thought she knew. A person she thought she was.

But she has already looked into the water, so now the image is ruined. Its colors are drained. It is unrecognizable. She cannot even remember what it looked like.

She cries out: "Sister!"

She falls forward into the water, the word unspoken, trapped in her throat.

Her dream goes nova.

* * *

IV

_"Our unbreakable bond -_

_Severed by your little secrets"_

Mileena awakens, believing she is drowning.

She grasps at her throat, her coughs rending the silence of the Edenian midnight. Her shadow lands ripple like velvet on the walls, so sudden is her departure from their borders. The mirror across from her bed reflects Mileena's tussled hair, her terrified expression. The candlelight casts her face in sharp relief, highlighting her Tarkatan fangs, her eyes blooming in rich carmine.

She looks away.

Slowly she comes to her senses, but it is too late to catch the fleeting threads of her nightmare. Perhaps she is better off not remembering, since it frightened her so. But now Mileena is wide awake, and one cannot simply escape back into the shadow lands after leaving so abruptly. Mileena runs her fingers through her hair, feeling for the source of the crimson pain pulsing through her head.

But only finds the tin echoes of half-phrases, each with the weightlessness of cirrus-clouds…

"_She was not ready for this—_"

_ "I only wanted to give her a chance—_"

She sees the words spiraling, cascading in blue and green colors, but they mean nothing to her. Words are useless if they simply linger: they must be _spoken_. Mileena knows this. It makes remembering difficult. She groans, forces herself out of bed for want of something else to think about. She rummages through her trove of dolls and toys, eventually recovering her lavender robes from the chaos. At least _they _are here, unlike her mask, which she had forgotten to retrieve from the forest floor earlier that night. Its absence struck her only before she went to bed, strikes her again now.

She moans at the thought of that piece of her being so far away.

Mileena dons her dress, pushes the window open, leans over the windowsill. Looks down upon her slumbering sea. She admires the perfection with which it reflects her navy sky, her waxing moon, her glimmering stars. She becomes lost in the perfect symmetry between the two planes.

So lost that she finds herself overtaken by memory, as the sea begins to reflect her sister's private study and the scene that took place therein…

* * *

A voice rings out in blue: 'What did you call me?'

'You heard me', replies another voice, shimmering in green. 'You were a fool for sending her with me.'

'Where is she? Is she safe? Is she injured?'

'Your sister is unharmed. She is outside, likely chasing birds or crickets, as is her wont.' The green voice grows saturated. Jealousy. 'And I appreciate your concern for _my _injuries.'

'She is my sister! It is only natural that I be concerned about her welfare!' The blue voice dips into violet.

'And I am your friend! I am more a sister to you than she could ever be! Have you forgotten what she is? How she came to be in the first place?'

'Enough! We will not discuss this further!'

'Fine, but you know I am right.'

Both voices cool into plaintive, faded colors.

'I need to go see her,' says the blue, dipping into cautious navy. 'I need to know what happened.'

'You do not need her to tell you anything. The target defeated us and escaped. Your intelligence and my scouts were correct in that there was indeed an Outworld presence within the forest. What we did not know was the nature of that force.'

'I suspected Tarkatan loyalists.'

'Noob Saibot.'

The blue voice flares from navy to bright azure. 'The revenant?'

'Indeed.'

'I thought he died along with the emperor!'

'We were both wrong.' The green voice shifts to sorrowful turquoise. 'The band of mercenaries was actually a flock of clones, with the original hidden in their midst. I managed to separate him from his doppelgangers and engage him in single combat. The results were…'

'But you are alive, as is my sister. There has to be a reason.'

'If there is a reason, it is impossible to know. The revenant uttered spiritual jargon and fled before we could give chase. I believe the death of the emperor has shattered his grasp on reality and he is doing all he can to retain whatever sanity he had. He resorts to a spirituality he did not have before.'

'You are jumping to conclusions. I must confer with Raiden. There is more to this.'

'You said Raiden disappeared months ago.'

'And he put us at a great disadvantage in doing so! We must find out if there is any correlation between the insurgents in Earthrealm and what Noob Saibot said to you and my sister. If there is indeed a link, perhaps we can-'

'Quiet. We are being watched.'

A cautious magenta weaves its way into the scene.

'Come in, Sister. Were you listening in on us?' The blue voice sinks into the color of shadows.

'Sister…' says the magenta voice in careful, staccato notes, 'did I do something wrong?'

The green voice abruptly disappears, beckoning the blue to follow suit.

'Are you all right?' asks the shadowy blue, resisting the urge to leave. 'You are bruised under your eye. Perhaps we can have that looked at tomorrow—'

'Sister, why is she so mad at me?'

'She is not mad at you. It is just that things did not turn out like we planned. It is not your fault—'

'But she said that it _was_ my fault that we were beaten. That it was _my_ fault that the bad man escaped. Her eyes had a wicked color in them. She said she was going to kill me.'

'What? No, she would never—'

The magenta voice ignites into a furious crimson. 'Is that what makes her your friend, Sister? Is it because she wants to kill me?'

The blue voice erupts in turn: 'By the gods, listen to what you are saying! She does not want to kill you, Sister; she would never even think of hurting you. She was angry at _me_. It is my fault things turned out the way they did. She and I just have to—'

'You are angry with me, aren't you, Sister? You are friends with her, and she is angry with me. So you must be, too.'

The green hue beckons once more for the blue to follow. The blue voice fades into a weak turquoise, says 'Sister, I must go. We will discuss this some other time. Please, just go to your room and play with your dolls.'

'No!" The crimson voice goes nova. 'Why won't you tell me what I did wrong?!'

'I said go to your room. Now.'

The colors disperse.

* * *

And the sea returns.

"Foolish Jade," hisses Mileena. "Foolish Sister. All I want is to know why they are so mad at me. Instead, they keep secrets and punish me for asking. They are probably laughing about it, too."

It is the disquiet that gets her. Not something she can ignore or dream away. She does not want to go back there, anyway, for fear of another nightmare. There will be no sleeping tonight. Mileena paces back and forth through her room, seeking distraction. She notices her teddy bear watching her from among her tussled blankets; she scoops it up in her arms and sits down at the edge of her bed.

"They are so confusing. The both of them," she sighs as she hugs her bear close. "One moment they pretend to be understanding and kind – or at least Sister does – and then the next moment they play tricks on me! Sister lets me go on an adventure, but then gets mad when something goes wrong! And Jade pretends to be so serious and strict, but then forces me to play games with stupid rules! I shall not let them get away with this. No, this time, _I_ want to play a trick on _them_, Teddy. I want to make them realize how stupid and bad they are for teasing me so."

She twists the bear around, stares it straight in the eyes. It cannot help but look back.

"Ah! Again you do not understand!" says Mileena. "Teasing Sister is very different from her teasing me. She is afraid to show how much she likes me. I have seen the twinkle in her eyes when I try to make her laugh, the way she looks at me when I am around her. Her eyes smile even though her mouth does not. Eyes tell everything about a person, Teddy. But this time there was nothing in her eyes. She did not feel like Sister. She was like Jade, and that is a bad thing."

Mileena can see her faded reflection in her bear's beady eyes.

"That is why I want revenge. I want to make Jade see how wrong she is for treating me so. But more importantly, I want to make Sister realize she is doing a bad thing. I want to teach her that she is Sister first, and Jade's 'friend' last. The more she is like Jade, the less she will be like Sister. And that is scary to think about."

The wind laps at the candles; her shadow lands melt along the walls.

"And why should I _not_ try to get back at them? Revenge always works, Teddy. Have you not heard the saying? 'An eye for an eye makes Mileena satisfied'?"

She tilts the bear's head to one side.

"What? You mean instead of seeking revenge and making things worse, I should try to make it up to Sister? And Jade, too?"

She makes the bear nod.

"That is…a _brilliant _idea!" she cries, her mouth open wide with glee. "Yes, I _see_ now. Instead of stooping to their level, I shall show Sister and Jade that I am smarter than they think. I will fix what went wrong and make them grateful that they have me. But that means I have to learn what they do not want me to know, and they are both good at keeping secrets. I cannot ask them…" Mileena strokes her chin in contemplation, her eyes suddenly lighting up. "Unless…oh! Sister's scrolls! She was reading them before I left for the forest! She would not let me near them. That must mean they contain important in-for-_may_-tion!

"Anything else you can think of, Teddy?"

The bear's head lolls in deep contemplation.

"Sister's amulet? Ah, yes, that is _very_ good. I shall have to find it and steeeeal it. Steeeealing is so much fun!" She giggles delightedly at the prospect, at the cartoonish images of her pilfering both items from Sister's grasp, of steam erupting from Sister's ears. "I am glad you are here to listen to me come up with all these great ideas. Otherwise nobody would know how brrrilliant I am!"

And then she drops her bear on the ground, her hands shooting up to her cheeks in joy as she gasps "Oh! And we simply _must _make a game of this! The palace as the playing field and Sister as my opponent…so thrilling! What _ever_ shall the rules be?"

But a pang of guilt in her stomach instantly kills Mileena's elation. Suddenly those watercolor images of that past evening – the forest, the mercenaries, Jade in such horrible condition – become vivid, too real to simply ignore. The guilt does not come from any one image, but it makes Mileena feel ill for even considering the word 'game'.

"Um…how about we just have one rule?" she concedes quietly as she stands up and picks up her bear. "'Don't get caught.' Okay?"

And, as she approaches the door, she says to her little friend: "Yes, _we_. Because _you _arecoming with me."

She turns the doorknob with a practiced patience so that it will not squeak. But before she eases the door open, Mileena hears two muffled voices approach from down the hall. Sister and Jade? She presses her ear against the door, holds her breath, and listens.

"…appears that Addas from the village is becoming stronger with each passing day…"

"…truly admire his uppercut. Raphael touts it as 'toasty'. At first I was skeptical, but now I am a believer…"

_Silly guardsmen!_ Mileena rolls her eyes. As she waits for them to turn the corner, Mileena remembers Sister's harsh tone from earlier that evening, the way she ordered her to her room without explanation. It occurs to Mileena that if Sister does not trust her enough to tell her what went wrong in the forest, it follows that she would also be wary of Mileena acting as she pleases. The realization makes Mileena thrust her door open more aggressively than she'd planned.

_Sister may have sent guards to spy on me. She thinks I will not notice, because she has never had them follow me before. Come to think of it, it might have been Jade who sent them. Was Jade not a guard herself once?_

The implications dawn on Mileena as she closes her door behind her. _But that's…not possible, is it? Can Jade be Jade and a guard and a friend and a…all at once?!_

She slaps the side of her head. _Ack! No more thinking!_

This is easy enough for Mileena, who simply loses herself to her senses as she slinks her way down the hall, the maroon carpet lush and soft between her toes. The candles lining the narrow corridors of the residence atrium cast shadows in flickering constellations. Mileena would lose herself in these if Edenians actually knew how to arrange them properly. There is an art to shadow-casting; minimalism is paramount. In trying to illuminate every corner of their abodes, the Edenians have starved their shadows to near-extinction. Those that remain are frantic, like birds fleeing from cats. One must let shadows sway unperturbed.

But, thinks Mileena as she approaches Sister's study, at least the amber lighting of the hallway is 'correct'. Drowsy, patient, it smiles at Mileena, knows what she is up to, but will never tell another soul. A color which keeps secrets. Her favorite kind.

She can already feel the warmth billowing from the study's fireplace, the frantic snapping of the embers. That musty smell of books with no pictures, only stories chopped up and sprinkled into delicate words. Sister, of course, never lets Mileena improve them by drawing her own pictures inside.

Once she arrives at the entryway, she peeks inside, keeping to the shadows…

And sees Sister, Jade, and herself standing before the fireplace.

Mileena pulls back into the darkness, holding her bear close while barely suppressing a shriek. She feels the impulse to scamper back to her room, but cannot do anything other than try to catch her breath. Swallowing hard, she pokes her bear's head through the entryway as a periscope.

"A-are they still there? What are they doing?"

But the bear is speechless.

Mileena steals a quick glance back at the study's interior, but only finds an empty room waiting for her.

"Visions!"she reasons, still trembling as she inches her way into the room. "I must be sleepier than I thought."

Mileena's shadow is flung upon the wall the moment she crosses the threshold. Like a playmate thrilled to see her return. It is strange to see it dancing solo in a room she often associates with her sister. Kitana's absence is palpable here. Remembering her task, she turns toward the short table where she last saw the scrolls.

Flash of emerald in the corner of her eye.

_Jade!_

Mileena whips around, but again sees nothing. Only her shadow swaying to and fro to the cadence of the crackling fire.

She runs a tense hand through her hair, crushing her bear against her chest with one arm. It is as she feared: the memories from the forest have overcome the boundaries of sleep. Not enough time has passed for those events to feel like yesterday - the past seeps into the present. Mileena's newfound fright claws at her, scatters her focus, her reason for coming here. With each passing second the wall's coloration grows more saturated, the shadows deepen, the golden etchings slither like serpents come alive, until everything in her field of vision runs like a wet painting, transmogrifying into temporal liquid…

Everything grins at her, and starts to laugh.

"Stop!" hisses Mileena, whirling toward the fireplace in panic, burying her focus in the warm blaze.

The room returns to normal when she looks back.

_This has become a bad place_, thinks Mileena. _Somebody has done something to it. Even the walls play tricks on me!_

The fact that Sister's scrolls have vanished from their table does nothing to help Mileena refocus, but at least trying to find them will keep her mind off of everything else. Anything to stop thinking in reverse.

_There were many scrolls when I came to see Sister earlier_, thinks Mileena. _She was so interested in them, too. She spends so much time here these days. This means she must keep them somewhere in this study…somewhere secret._

Luckily for Mileena, the room is rife with potential hiding spots. The walls, save for the one opposite the fireplace, are lined with colossal bookcases, each one rising as high as thirty meters. The top shelves are too high up to receive any of the fire's glow, and are thus wreathed in shadow. Mileena sets her teddy bear on the couch as her lookout while she rummages through the bookcases for switches, levers, anything that embodies the word "suspicious". But the books hide no secrets other than their own stories, and it is doubtful Sister would hide switches among them when they all look so alike.

That is when Mileena notices a small opening in the wall above the bookcase directly to the left of the fireplace. A crawlspace? It would make sense, thinks Mileena. After all, Sister always tries to keep important things out of reach of children. Mileena prepares to scale the bookcase, but realizes that this would be too difficult in her dress. Instead, she retrieves the wheeled ladder from the other end of the study and, with some difficulty, props it up against the bookcase.

_Alright. It is time to climb this thing! _she thinks, her already-weakened enthusiasm dwindling as she notices the sheer height to which she must climb. _I cannot even see the books on the top shelves!_

_That is it, _she thinks as she begins working her way up._ I am going to die._

But there is something fascinating about hearing the crackling of the fireplace fade into near-silence the higher she ascends. In fact, Mileena feels compelled to look down upon the vast study, like how she so often beholds all of Edenia from atop the highest tree she can find, but she does not trust this room. That sense that she is being monitored by the walls themselves cuts down her bravery. She still has to try to forget that flash of emerald in her peripheral vision.

And so Mileena is relieved to discover that it is indeed a crawlspace, covered by a glass lid, waiting for her at the top of her climb. She eagerly pries open the surface, wondering why Sister, of all people, gets to have one of these. It is too dark to make out the interior, and so Mileena reaches in, sweeps her hand over a thick film of dust. At first it seems there is nothing there, but after a moment she feels something brush against her fingertips; the second she does, she snatches it between her fingers.

She slips the single scroll out of the crawlspace and gazes at it greedily, that thrill in her chest now overwhelming.

_Ha! Even easier than I thought! This must be the most important one, since Sister went to all the trouble of hiding it. _Giggling, Mileena slips the scroll into her dress, closes the glass lid, and peers down to see if her teddy bear has been compromised.

And is overwhelmed by an onrush of vertigo.

Mileena yelps in terror and clings to the ladder for dear life. She never imagined the ground could appear so distant, even more so than the Edenian lowlands from atop the palace roof. Her paralysis passes quickly, and her animal panic forces her to descend with all speed, but it does not stop her from shaking all the way down. Feeling the lush carpet between her toes is like waking from a nightmare, realizing that the danger, however illusory, has passed. But all other sensation is shot.

Mileena trots over to her teddy bear and scoops it up, whispering, "I am okay, Teddy, do not worry about me. My eyes just played another trick on me, that is all. I cannot be scared so easily."

Snapping of embers. Her shadow waltzes to the sound.

"I am _not _scared!" she hisses, pulling the scroll out of her dress with trembling fingers. "See here? I just scored the first point over Sister. Now we just need to find the amulet, and then we can see what she has been hiding from me."

Mileena remembers the way Kitana held the amulet tightly in her hand, the way the string of pearls dangled from between her fingers. Not so easily disregarded as her scrolls. It is a precious thing, and she undoubtedly keeps it close. Knowing this, Mileena steals away from that horrid study, following the cerulean carpet toward her sister's private chambers.

Her shadow, lingering on the wall, dies out in her absence.

* * *

Mileena has never ventured this far into her sister's private section of the palace, else she would have noticed the vast open hallway leading to her room.

While the right wall remains intact, painted in the blue tones of the sea and adorned with silver waves, the left wall is actually a balcony, complete with stone steps leading down into a grandiose garden. After making sure the coast is clear, Mileena steps toward the railing and imbibes in the surprising sight of lush ferns and blooming flowers, painted in the deep navy of night. She quietly marvels at the grand ivory fountain in the garden's center, constricted by flowing vines. That earthy smell - that of an entire realm compressed into one tranquil scene – seems so familiar, and it enraptures Mileena.

_Why does Sister have so many amazing things? _Mileena pouts. _Why can't I have my own garden?_

But that argument can wait for another day.

Mileena retreats into the shadows, away from the moonlight, keeping her hand over her bear's mouth in case it speaks. That disquiet has returned, that entropic feeling she felt in her stomach after waking from her nightmare, but this time it is born of a sheer sense of _absence_. It struck her earlier that the palace has been unnervingly silent this night – no guards, handmaidens, or monks to be seen. Her one rule – 'do not get caught' – is starting to seem meaningless.

_This is not right_, thinks Mileena, slowly inching her way down the hallway. _Sister has made this far too easy. She must be playing another trick on me…_

"Lady Mileena?"

Mileena shrieks, dropping her teddy bear as she whirls around to meet her handmaiden's wide, terrified stare. Both her and Mileena look away, as if fearful that they will turn to stone should their eyes meet.

"Y-you were not in your room when I knocked on your d-door," the retainer stammers after a moment. Mileena slowly regains her composure, notices that the girl is quickly stealing glances at her Tarkatan fangs. "I was w-worried."

"Shhhh!" hisses Mileena. "Everyone has gone to bed, silly girl! And why did you assume I was up and about when I did not respond? I could have been sleeping!"

"I…um…" The girl looks set to shrivel up on the spot. "Oh, look, you dropped your t-teddy bear."

"Answer my question!" Mileena snatches her little friend off the floor and jealously hugs him close. When the retainer does not respond, Mileena clears her throat and says, "Uh, I mean…answer my question, please?"

That one word, absurdly, instantly stops the girl's trembling.

"Queen Kitana mentioned that you might not be feeling well after what happened. I was asked to make sure you did not hurt yourself or start wandering around without her consent."

_Drats! Of course! My own retainer is a spy for Sister! _thinks Mileena, stifling a horrified gasp._ What is next? Did she booby trap my dollies? _

…_Oh no, Sister booby trapped my dollies! _Her jaw drops hopelessly.

It occurs to Mileena that she could slaughter the girl to prevent her from reporting back to Sister. And yet she cannot summon that primal desire for blood, that urge to imbibe in the decadent act of killing. Unsure of what else to do, Mileena tries to smile at the girl.

This does not translate as well as she'd hoped. The girl backs herself into the corner, quaking in sheer terror.

"Teddy and I are only taking a little stroll," Mileena fibs in the sweetest tone she can muster. "We very much like looking at the flowers."

The girl looks as if she is about to go catatonic.

"I-I was thinking of gathering some to put in my room! I thought they would look pretty, next to my ribbon collection." Mileena winces as she forces the words out, fighting back the urge to tear the girl's throat out with her fangs. But when the girl nods and offers a strained smile, Mileena seizes the initiative. "I do not think Sister would mind me doing so. Oh! By the way, is she still speaking with Lady Jade?"

"N-no, they parted several hours ago. Why?"

_Stupid Mileena! Of course she would ask why! Why can't I just kill her?!_

"W-well, I wanted to...see if Lady Jade is feeling better!" At the sight of the girl's eyebrow rising, Mileena panics and stammers: "A-And maybe give her something to make her feel happy! Like a...a…oh, what do you call it?"

"Present?"

"_Yes!_ I want to give Jade a present. From me. That is, a present to Lady Jade from myself. Which is good. _Yes_."

Mileena holds her breath and hopes it takes.

The handmaiden seems to have difficulty reconciling Mileena's face with her words, but she slowly begins to understand. "Oh, are you going to give her your stuffed animal?"

_Yes, yes, let us go with that!_ thinks Mileena, nodding enthusiastically.

"Oh, is _that _the reason you were gathering flowers?"

"Yes, that is _exactly _it. You are not as stupid as you – I mean, you are very astute! Yes. _Verrrry_ astute."

"That is…actually quite sweet of you, Lady Mileena," concedes the girl with a smile. "Unfortunately, Lady Jade has business to take care of elsewhere on the palace grounds, so you will not find her in her quarters. Queen Kitana has not returned, either, so if you were expecting to see her, you might have to look in the east atrium. You know which direction East is, right?"

Mileena nods. _I have fooled your spy into betraying you, Sister! The advantage remains mine!_

"Then enjoy the gardens, Lady Mileena. Do not stay up too late, or your sister will…uh, you don't think she will kill me if you sleep in, do you?"

"Oooh, perhaps she will…" hisses Mileena, gesturing with her fingers.

"Oh," chokes the retainer, her pupils dancing madly against her irises. "I…I'm going to go."

She flutters off.

Mileena listens for the handmaiden's soft footsteps, so characteristic of the Edenian aristocracy, to fade into the white noise of night. Once she is sure that she is gone, she scurries down the hallway, leans up against the door to Sister's room, listens for the telltale signs of her sister's presence. The girl had been correct: Sister is elsewhere. And yet strangely, the door is unlocked. Mileena soundlessly slips into the room, into sheer darkness, save for the light of the waxing moon peering through the window.

The bed is tidily made. And vacant.

"Sister's _room_…" whispers Mileena into the top of her teddy bear's head. "I did not think it would be so easy… There are so many secrets here! Oh, where to even _begin_ searching?"

The chamber is sparse and unexpectedly humble, but steeped in Sister's essence all the same. The colors of the curtains, the bed-sheets, the images of flowers etched into the walls…all of a retrospective and regal blue. Mileena has often wondered why Sister loves this color so; it is the color of sadness, of cool disposition, of sweeping legatos in minor keys. It flows from a piano's deepest notes, a harp's thickest strings, and travels along the frostiest winds. It is a hue Mileena is familiar with, that she has felt, that she has sung to herself in more solemn hours, but that it is so intertwined with her Sister makes her feel something in her chest.

This is the color of the mournful, of the sub-zero emotions.

On a plaque above Sister's bed rests a pair of elegant fans. It is the first time Mileena has seen them apart from Kitana like this. She wonders if Kitana can feel their absence on some days, the way she now feels the distance between herself and her lost mask. Mileena thinks that maybe she should touch those fans, run a finger along their silky blue embroidery and discover what it feels like to be Sister.

Now that she thinks of it, Mileena cannot think of anyone else she would rather be.

The glint of pearls on Sister's nightstand draws Mileena's attention away from the fans. Gasping in delight, Mileena scurries up and absorbs the sight of the amulet, so ornate and well-kept. She runs trembling fingers along the amulet's sapphire center gem, imbibes in the flawless texture of the pearls. She can imagine wearing this, wonders why her sister does not.

"Maybe I can try it on when we get back to the room," she whispers into her teddy's head. "I would love to see how pretty this would look on me."

She snatches it from the table. Fittingly, due to its color, the amulet is cold in her palm, a chilled touch that soon grows into a painful sting. She drops it on the carpet, licks her frostbitten fingers in confusion.

Wincing, Mileena wraps her long sleeve around her hand and picks it up again, examining the central gem further. Upon closer inspection she notices that there is a swirling mist inside, like a miniature world, a private ocean. Is this what Sister spoke to? That other world? Information is one thing, but if Sister has been concealing an entire _world _from her…

"Alright, Teddy, we can look at this when we get back!" she whispers, tucking the amulet into her pocket. "Let us leave before Sister returns—"

She turns to meet the stares of three men.

_Assassins!_

Mileena snarls and leaps back, reaching for her sais, discovering far too late that she left them in her room. Instead she assumes a fighting stance, but the men do not attack, do not even move. It takes a few seconds for Mileena to realize that they are only _outlines_ of men, poltergeists shimmering faintly in the still air and almost impossible to differentiate from one another. The one in the center appears to wear loose-fitting monk robes, while the men flanking him are garbed in assassin attire. Each has his hands behind his back, either bound or willingly.

Mileena takes a step forward, her eyes locked on the man on the left.

_I recognize him._ Her eyes widen in shock. _I think…he is the one from the forest!_

"You are not supposed to be here!" she hisses. "This is Sister's room! All are forbidden!"

But it is like speaking to suits of armor: they appear lifelike, so one assumes they will respond when spoken to, and yet it is always unnerving when they don't.

_They are not real, _reasons Mileena, loosening her stance. She attempts to study their features further, beyond their attire, but they are only half-images, too shallow to hold real depth, real identity. They do not even acknowledge her.

Two more ghostly figures – a man and woman – step out of the wall. They do not face the three men directly, but instead remain where they are, as if wanting Mileena to see all of their faces simultaneously. The new man assumes a rigid stance, stroking his beard in appraisal of the three men. The woman at his side sways back and forth, her mannerisms serpentine, hypnotic. She appears entranced.

"This is the revenant you promised?" says the bearded ghost, his voice frigid, empty, insubstantial. A mere echo of words spoken long ago.

The robed man in the center of the trio nods, gesturing to the man from the forest.

"You are certain he retains full functionality?" asks the bearded man. His form, his voice...they seem so familiar to Mileena.

"I know the Emperor demands only the strongest," says the robed man in the center. "Between this revenant's mortal form and his present one, there is no comparison."

"Then he is adequate?"

"That word is an _insult_," sneers the robed man, his tone shaped by his grin. Mileena does not recognize him, but his voice is as ice to her heart and sets her entire body to shivering. "'Adequate' belittles his strength. He has overcome the constraints of Time itself, and is all the stronger for it."

"I see," says the bearded man. "And what is your name, revenant?"

"I call him Noob Saibot," says the robed man, his voice flavored with pride. "It is a name that will be remembered so long as he serves your Emperor."

"The Emperor will be most pleased with your offering." The bearded man then looks at the figure on the right side of the trio. "And will your assassin be lending his services, as well?"

"I serve no-one!" growls the assassin, his spectral voice booming throughout Kitana's room. Again, this voice seems to ring out from some nether region in Mileena's heart, though she finds nothing when she feels for a name or color to associate with it.

"Ha! No-one? A dangerous sentiment!" laughs the bearded man. "You know of the Emperor's ever-increasing power, assassin, and yet you swear fealty to no-one? Do you know what happens to those who defy the Emperor's will?"

"I demand vengeance for past wrongs, sorcerer. And though I have already achieved it, I am still unfulfilled. If your Emperor can quench my thirst for an endless revenge, let us hear his terms."

Silence. The bearded man turns to the robed man in the center. "One cannot keep the unprincipled on a leash so easily. I would watch my back if I were you, sorcerer."

The ghostly woman, heretofore content to simply watch the exchange, giggles in agreement. "Father would be most amused if you were to be cut down by your own assassin!" she coos.

The words are like shards of ice to Mileena's heart.

"_No! Do not speak! Do not say any more!_" she shrieks, covering her ears as the voice penetrates her mind.

But the ghostly woman does not hear, and instead approaches the man from the forest, meets his gaze face-to-face. She cocks her head to one side, as if appraising a potential pet.

"Yes, he will do," she says, her voice slithering into Mileena's soul. "I shall take him to Father myself! He will be most _pleased_ with his new warrior!"

"_Silence! You are wrong! You must leave! You—"_

But the images simply vanish, leaving ectoplasmic strings - like those of fleeting dreams - in their wake.

In their place is only Kitana's room, swathed in midnight hues. Mileena tries to take a step forward, but only chokes on the air, and is overcome once again by that sensation of drowning. She doubles over and coughs violently, the tears in her eyes sending Kitana's floor swimming like watercolors. Her body soon tires itself out, and within moments she ceases coughing, but even thinking of the words to address the vision only results in more tears.

_I must get out of here_, she thinks. She wipes her eyes, sets her sights on the open doorway.

And sees a pair of garnet eyes staring at her from down the hall.

She blinks once, and they are gone.

And Mileena, too, is gone. She runs down the winding corridors, through hallways oversaturated with candlelight, where no shadows dare to dwell. None of these things matter to Mileena - her mind is focused on that one vision, that one out of so many others. But as she approaches her chambers with the scroll and amulet in her possession, she realizes that what frightens her is the sense that what she witnessed was more than a vision, more than a mere hallucination.

It was the truth.


	5. The Asylum

V

_"Do not knock, nor disturb -_

_I am solving puzzles in my asylum"_

She triple-checks the lock on her door. Slams her window shut, for fear that poltergeists might creep in and wail nostalgic hymns. Draws the curtains, so that the moonlight may seep through the linen in lavender streaks. She then takes the wick dipper on her dresser and extinguishes the two-dozen candles placed throughout her room. Each wax-drowned flame submerges her shadow lands deeper into darkness. She spares the lone candle on her nightstand, all too aware of the fine line between asylum and abyss.

None of these precautions stop Mileena's trembling. It is a kind of fear she cannot fight, cannot hide from. Only one from which she can wake up. Which is why, as she starts building a barricade of dolls at the foot of her door, she pinches herself in the arm at intervals, each time harder and more desperately.

And all the while her imagination pirouettes and somersaults; it chases, catches, and eviscerates every nascent thought that might obscure her obsession with the garnet eyes in Sister's hallway. Her fixation is so acute it leaves her fingertips numb, such that she cannot tell, without looking, when she has picked a doll up and when she has put it down.

Garnet eyes.

Why garnet, she wonders? Why not red? The question dances on her tongue. Most likely it is because garnet has texture as well as hue, while red is simply color. Garnet belongs to a higher stratum of characteristic - it is more _real_ to Mileena. Which means the eyes must also be real.

She violently shakes her head at the thought, as if it is a parasite nestled deep in her ear canal.

_Every scary thing I have seen tonight has been an illusion_, she thinks, fortifying the vanguardof her doll-force with a platoon of foxes and hares. _Sister's garden, the silly girl…they were real, and they were not scary. The eyes were scary, which means they were just mind tricks._

But even this explanation does not stop her from thinking about them.

For they, like Noob Saibot, had tried to make her _remember_. Not simply see things, but recall something specific to Mileena herself. She knows this now, for the eyes and the illusions in Sister's room all had the gravitational pull of the past. This must have been what made her scream at the visions, made her cry.

_The people in that vision…I feel like I know them from somewhere. I guess they _could_ be real, but in a special way. And yet the pictures they show me…I do not recognize them. Oh, I am so confused!_

She knows this because that last vision – the five figures, the echoing, fragmented conversation – felt false, a collage of five memories pretending to be one. A hallucination of Kitana crowning Jade Queen of Edenia would have been just as convincing. Sister and Jade are real, but the event would be wrong for so many reasons.

"Well, perhaps it does not matter what the visions mean," she whispers, shoving an overstuffed bunny alongside a depressed-looking mouse. "What matters is that someone is playing tricks on me. I do not know why, but it is cruel. Not even Jade would taunt me in this way. And she wants to kill me!"

Mileena completes her barricade with an orangutan doll wearing a frenzied expression, the arms of which she wraps around her army. The futility of this exercise gnaws at her; she ignores it with clenched fists. "And Sister would not dare try to hurt me in this way, would she?"

Her teddy bear watches from the bed.

"And yet she has shown that she favors Jade over me. She would not even answer my questions, like she always does. I do not understand, Teddy. How can a friend be more important than a sister? A friend is not family. Sister has forgotten this."

She sighs. "But why? After all, aren't sisters supposed to…"

She feels for the word, grasping at the space in front of her, but finds only thin air. Not even a color, or a melody that might better express her thoughts. "Aren't they supposed to _have _something? Sisters share that _thing_ that makes them family, don't they? Not only blood, but…"

The poltergeists scratch at her window, disguised as wind.

"I do not want to believe that this is the work of either Sister or Jade. I am mad, but I shall not blame them. Not yet. They gave me a chance to do something today, and they punished me for it. I can at least prove that I am better than them by giving them a chance, too. Because at least _I _know what it means to be a sister.

"…I think," she adds as she plops herself belly-down on her bed, alongside her two stolen artifacts. Trying to make up for her own faults to gain Sister and Jade's gratitude seems a petty goal, now that so many questions need answering. Noble, but petty.

She takes Kitana's amulet in her fingers, watches the amber light of the lone candle glint off of the string of pearls. Within seconds the amulet's stinging chill forces her to drop it onto the sheets.

_How did Sister hold onto this for as long as she did? _Mileena gapes at the frost creeping along her comforter from beneath the embossed silver. She pouts. _Well! So much for trying it on!_

She traces a finger along the amulet's edge. Admires the intricate weave of carved leaves, silver branches. Such details imply mountains, winding trails, curvature of a landscape and, beyond all this, a horizon. Mileena's vision blurs as a watercolor realm paints itself in her mind's eye. But strangely, it is only a portrait, not a place in which she can picture herself. Impenetrable.

She realizes why.

"Sister's dream world…" Mileena mutters, unsure whether to be elated or jealous of the fact that even things of this nature can be shared between sisters. She gazes at the wall where her shadows lands would sway, were her room not so dark. "Well, well…what does dear Sister dream of, I wonder?"

Her sense of touch dims as she examines the sheer level of detail in the amulet's design. She licks the frost off her finger when she is done.

Perhaps the amulet might _belong_ to Sister the way Mileena's shadow lands, landscapes, and synesthetic associations _belong_ to her. But then why can one sister access her own dream world while another cannot? Would Kitana fail to enter Mileena's shadow lands if she tried?

Even if Mileena would grant her passage?

_Ah! Why do things become more confusing the longer I think about them? Should it not be the opposite?_

She turns her attention to the globe of sapphire in the amulet's center. Slides two fingers along its glossy surface. To Mileena's surprise and delight, the clouds trapped within react to her touch, parting beneath her fingertips. She gets carried away with this, swirling the clouds into a single spiral, then flattening them with a sweep of her palm. She teases them into wispy cirrus clouds, then mixes them together, setting off a few miniature cracks of lightning. She suddenly understands the appeal of owning something that makes one feel omnipotent. Her feet sway through the air, toes curling.

…_Oh! I have an idea!_

With a single finger, Mileena carefully draws an elegant 'M' in the clouds.

She giggles to herself, delighted.

But then sighs dejectedly when it vanishes before she can even start on the 'i'.

"It is fun to play with, but it knows I am not Sister," she says. "I do not think it can help me."

She tries to frown, then licks the ice on her fingertip again.

A man's voice rings out from under her chin: "So soon? Wow! She must really like me!"

Mileena nearly bites her finger off in shock. She looks around for signs of a silhouette, of motion, but finds only stillness. And then, her blood running cold, she slowly looks down at the amulet. And there, inside the gem, is a grimacing man in a denim suit.

Flashing bleached white teeth. His stare concealed in sunglasses.

"What's up, Baaaaaabe!"

Mileena shrieks, flips the amulet over, and scrambles under her covers in one lightning-bolt motion. Shaking as if freezing, she sinks her fangs into her comforter, easily piercing through the fabric. She then timidly peeks up from under the sheets at the insidious artifact sitting just two feet away, hoping it does not hear her heart pounding against her chest.

"Teddy!" she wails, her fangs hooked in her blanket. "The amulet is alive! _Alive!_"

But her teddy is enraptured and the only sound is the muffled voice of the man-in-the-gem. It speaks _and _inflicts pain if touched long enough.

_It is a monster! _she concludes, drool seeping into her blanket. _I must kill it! But how?_

Mileena extends a trembling leg toward the device, expecting it to bite off her toes once she is in range. She slides her foot under the amulet and, on the count of three, flips it back over like a pancake. The man's voice erupts into clarity the moment she does, and so Mileena retracts her foot immediately and takes cover under the blankets, letting out another yelp.

"—or you could try _walking_. As in, go out on a balcony." The voice warbles, pitch oscillating with every other syllable. "Or stand on a roof. Trust me, you'll get _much_ better reception. Otherwise I'm just wasting minutes here."

Mileena peeks up from beneath her sanctuary, unhooks her teeth from her saliva-soaked comforter. She crawls up to the amulet with all the bravery of a nose-nicked cat.

And there, reliably, is the man-in-the-gem. Still talking.

To himself.

"Teddy, this is no monster!" she whispers, her fear evaporating. "There is a fool _inside_ the amulet!"

The man cuts his diatribe short. Bites his lip. The huge pair of sunglasses on his face gives him an insectoid appearance. "Come on, Kitana," he whines, "enough with this 'fool' shtick, okay? I have a name, you know."

_Wait, since when am I Kitana? _thinks Mileena, trying to warp his face with her fingers, as she did with the clouds. "What is your name, Man-in-the-gem?" she asks.

"Oh. This again. You have an odd way of flirting, Princess."

"You do not have a name, Man-in-the-gem?"

"You obviously haven't been to Hollywood. Johnny Cage is only the _biggest_ name in the business. In fact, it's tattooed on my chest." He leans in, his face ballooning as if in a fish-eye lens, and flashes his teeth. "And also in _other_ places."

His elastic grin literally stretches from ear to ear.

"Other places? Like where?" asks Mileena, tilting her head to one side.

"I'd show you, but I'm on Sunset Boulevard. You get indecency charges for stunts like that." He clears his throat and whispers: "And I do my own stunts."

His eyebrows lurch up and down in a way that confuses Mileena's entire body.

"Alright, Johnny Cage," says Mileena, tracing his features with a fingertip. "What…is your favorite color?"

Silence effuses from her teddy bear. Mileena cups her palm over the amulet, muffling Cage's response. "What's that, Teddy?"

Pause.

"Oh, he actually thinks I _am_ Sister? That is funny! I thought he was just being a sillyhead."

The bear falls over.

"You are right. I can use this to my advantage! But…" She scratches her head, raises her eyebrows worriedly. "…I have only seen Sister speak to the amulet once. How would she go about doing this?"

She uncovers the amulet and sees that Johnny has been spending the last few seconds knocking against the 'glass'. Mileena wonders if he would fly away if released, and giggles at the image. "Sir Cage, can you see me?"

"Nope. Sound's coming in fine. I think it's something on your end."

Mileena gasps, looks at her rump. Expects to see insects.

"But there is nothing on my end! I…I mean…" She clears her throat, tries to emulate Kitana's voice: "I assume you are in Earthrealm, Sir Cage?"

"You sound awfully strange, Princess. Just come out of a dentist appointment?"

"I…um…my teeth…hurt! Ah…er…very much so, in fact!" Mileena tries to compensate for her jaw-given inflection. "I am talking with…my _head_…on…a block of ice!"

His mouth hangs open. Dumbstruck.

"Gorgeous _and _smart!" he finally blurts out through another unsettling grin. "So. I'm guessing this isn't a social call. You looking for someone? If it's Liu Kang again, you're out of luck. He just called to say he was headed somewhere 'important', so he's not exactly a-_vailable_. Just like everyone else, am I right?"

Mileena remembers spying on Sister's conversation with this Cage, but only remembers fragments of words, segments of sentences. She does, however, remember reacting to one word in particular. "I am looking for Raiden. He must know more than you do."

"Again?" sighs Cage. Mileena momentarily fears that she's botched her ruse by being too forward. "I already told you, Kitana, he's been gone for months. Ever since you became Queen, actually. Come on, you remember that."

_I think I remember that day, but not the way Sister remembers it._

"But because you're probably going to ask again tomorrow, I want you to know that Sonya _has _got in contact with Shaman Dude, and apparently he thinks he may have learned what happened to our favorite Thunder God. I'll call you when I hear more from her. So don't get your bikini in a twist."

He leans in again. "Unless you plan on taking it off, that is!"

Mileena rolls her eyes. _Jade was right. This man is an idiot! He is useless to me if he cannot give me the answers I seek!_

She clears her throat. "Sir Cage, what can you tell me about Noob Saibot?"

"What'd you call me?"

"Noob Saibot! He is an assassin. He wears all black, has scary eyes. Like…like an assassin who wears all black with scary eyes."

"So wait, I'm a parrot now, is that it? You want me to tell you what you've already told me?"

"I am writing a letter to my friend Jade. I want to make sure I include all of the details. Things I might have forgotten."

A part of her hopes he will tell her everything. She has been kept in the dark for far too long.

Cage takes off his glasses, pinches the space between his sunken eyes. "Kang would be better at this, but whatever. Let's see. You already know he's a left-over from the old Outworld army."

"I suppose I do," she lies. "And what do you mean, 'a' leftover?"

"I mean there's more than just him. You sent Liu Kang a list of possible survivors, didn't you?"

Jolt of electricity through her system. It is now no longer a question of _if _Kitana has been acting behind her back, but of to what extent. "Y-yes. Noob Saibot and…"

"I don't remember all of them, Princess. Reptile, Omac, and Barracuda are the only ones I can name off the top of my head."

Reptile. Now there is a name with density. It resides in that limbic realm of memory, hiding from her until now, but Mileena does not know why, or how it got there in the first place. Not yet, anyway. She hops off the bed, scoops up one of her coloring books and, with a nearby crayon, scribbles down misspelled variations of the three names.

"Yes, yes, very good," she says when she returns to the bed. "And what are they doing? Because Noob Saibot is-"

She bites her tongue before mentioning the episode in the forest. And stifles a wail of agony.

"I don't know any more than you do. We don't even know if they're working together. I say they're not, because I'd rather not imagine the alternative," says Cage. "Honestly, I don't know why Kang made me the 'temporary spokesperson for Earthrealm'. I mean, I did ask him, but he said it was better if I didn't know. I gave him the ol' Johnny Two-By-Four.

"…and by that I mean I gave him the middle finger. You know, Edenia. You guys don't get that kind of…uh, forget I said anything."

Mileena realizes that it would be a waste to try to wring any more information out of this wretch. Plus, she does not want to risk getting in trouble with Sister later on. "That is nice. Sorry, but now I must go," she says, inspecting the amulet for an off-switch. "Bye-bye!"

"What? No idle chatter? Talk about all business!"

"My teeth hurt. I have to go replace them."

"Right. You do that. I'm just going to stand here and look pretty. I'll call you up after I talk to Sonya and Shaman Dude about Raiden."

She hums to herself, ignoring him as she feels for that off-switch.

"Now that's just cold. Ease up on the ice a little next time, Princess! Not literally, though, considering your teeth and all."

She hisses at the insult.

But his grinning face sinks back into the clouds before she can tell whether or not he heard her. Either way, looking at her coloring book, she cannot help but feel satisfied. Names. Colors. People Sister has kept secret from her. None of them except Noob Saibot correlate with any of the visions she has seen this night, however. This might be proof that Kitana had nothing to do with them.

She thinks back to the events in the forest. Noob Saibot's fingers around her throat.

'Remember what it is to Be, Mileena,' he had said.

_Sister knows about Noob Saibot and the others_, thinks Mileena, hugging her knees close to her chest. _But she does not know that he knows my name. And that he tried to use his magic on me. But he did not use it on Jade. He only attacked her with his fists and feet instead of words and scary pictures._

She wonders: what makes her different? Noob Saibot had the chance to kill her, but did not. Mileena flirts with the notion that the only reason he did not kill Jade was because Mileena herself showed up at the last second.

She tries to smile, blushes at the image of herself arriving just in time…

She shakes her head. _No. She said she wanted to kill me._

Mileena disregards the amulet and snatches the scroll off her pillow. The parchment's soft texture assuages the frigid pain offered by Kitana's keepsake. Lying on her stomach, she twirls the thin roll between her fingers, thoughtfully kicking her feet back and forth through the warm air, letting her curiosity simmer. A moment later she unfurls her sister's scroll, the only one she saw fit to hide away.

And it is blank.

Mileena gapes at the tanned page. Another trick? She refuses to believe Kitana could be so craven, and so unfurls it further.

A small piece of paper flutters out of the scroll.

She snatches it between two fingers and holds it up to the candle's light. Kitana's cursive writing, flowing and elegant. Mileena is pleasantly surprised: she, too, can write like this. She secretly takes pride in the fact that it apparently took years for Kitana to reach this caliber of calligraphy, while it simply comes naturally for Mileena herself. This reminder of their similarity is somehow soothing.

"Listen to this, Teddy. It is by Sister," she says, and then whispers the letter's contents in a melodious tone:

"Master Irnest tells me that there is no trick, nor cipher that we can employ to read the hidden messages in the scrolls we found in the Edenian ruins. I asked him why, and he said it was because there are no hidden messages to begin with – the scrolls are as blank as they appear. We did notice that each one has small markings woven into its borders, so that the parchment, when completely unfurled, looks more like a picture-frame than a page. Even stranger, I have recently discovered that these markings are actually old Edenian script. They only translate into nonsense, unfortunately. This is the one scroll of the lot that bears symbols dissimilar to that script. I am starting to think the other two-dozen scrolls are decoys meant to conceal this one, but I cannot begin to imagine why.

"Only a bunch of big words from Sister," whines Mileena. "Such a bore! Ah, but her writing is pretty enough."

She flips the note over. A post-script:

"Jade thinks the markings on this scroll are Outworld characters. Does Outworld have its own script? I thought it stole lexicon from other realms. I may have to laugh at her if she is wrong. I think Mileena would like that. She has become quite fascinated with Jade."

The word 'Mileena' is darker than the rest of the text, and looks to have been erased several times.

Nonetheless she finds herself giggling at the image of Sister laughing at Jade, Jade's face crimsoning with embarrassment, and Mileena herself…doing what? She cannot decide. She is not content with simply being there to laugh at Sister's reprisal, or to tease Jade for her foolishness. Her role needs to be _vibrant_. Meaningful.

She blushes again.

"No," she hisses, grabbing her hair with her free hand. "Stop thinking about them, Mileena."

And so she follows the note's advice, studies the draconic characters woven into the parchment's borders. From what she can see, there is no pattern, nor anything indicative of sentence structure or an alphabet. Mileena tries to find faces and symbols in them, like how she always attempts to spot expressions in tree bark or carpets, but these markings elude even that practice. Now she knows why Kitana had been so quick to sort through these scrolls. What kind of portrait has no substance and only a frame? It is antithetical to what Mileena associates with art or writing. She scratches her head and pouts.

"…Whoever wrote this scroll was such a fool!" she decides, casting a derisive glare at her teddy bear. "He forgot the most important part: the writing! This is very dumb. Or very, very smart. I cannot decide. But it makes my head hurt."

Another minute of fruitless deciphering and Mileena simply growls in frustration. "Oh, this is stupid! I thought this would help me, but I cannot decide what kind of riddle this is. It only makes me feel dumb!"

The realization that she is losing to a piece of blank paper is too much to bear, and Mileena's temper overwhelms her. Angry tears blur her vision as she attempts to rip the scroll in two.

But stops when she notices a thin graphite line in the center of the page.

Her jaw drops when she realizes it is alive, and drawing itself.

"Oh! Look! Look!" she yelps, snatching her teddy bear in her arms so that he, too, can witness this magic. She holds the scroll to the candlelight, follows the line as it snakes its way across the smooth tanned page, eventually branching off into different paths at random. "Are they little worms? Caterpillars?" The possibilities swarm about in her head, setting her imagination aflame.

Mileena studies the myriad paths the lines take, the way they weave through the fabric of the parchment the way the needle does when she sews and stitches her dolls. Though they do so without any obvious pattern, the lines eventually multiply to an extent where it becomes too hard to keep track of them all, and so Mileena pulls back, takes in the aggregate image, drawn within the frame of the Outworld characters.

And beholds an elegant sketch of a woman, dressed in a regal Edenian gown and veil.

"That looks like a princess," whispers a dazzled Mileena to her bear. "She is very beautiful, don't you think?"

Her admiration of the sketch only soars when the woman's shadow begins to ebb, sway, and finally take the form of a woman. And this figure, too, becomes a beautiful princess, identical to the first.

"Sisters!" squeals Mileena, twirling her feet in the air, overcome with delight.

And when the two princesses embrace, Mileena coos empathetically. Watching them show such affection fosters a new glow within Mileena's chest, a deep ruby that swims throughout her veins and warms even her fingertips. Numbness's saccharine cousin. She opens her jaw wide in a makeshift smile.

"They are a family. They have that _something _between them." She tries for the word again, pressing her fingers to the place where her heart should be. "They l…live? Live together? Live as one?"

Nothing.

"They feel l…lost? No, that is not it…"

She wonders what it must feel like to embrace one's own sister.

But the image provides no answer, except to show her what it would look like. And it remains frozen in that frame…

Until the shadow-sister thrusts a graphite blade through her sibling's stomach.

"Wait!" Mileena bolts up in horror. "What are you doing?!"

The subsequent animation is almost too fast for her to follow. The shadow-born sister lays her slain sibling on an undrawn floor, their expressions too vague to read, but easy to infer. A large, ornate chair is swiftly outlined and filled in in the background, while the slain sister simply flakes off into desiccated black particles, tumbling off the page and onto Mileena's comforter. She watches them – remnants of an imagined sister – collect, unable to understand how such a transformation could be allowed to take place. When she looks back at the page, the shadow-born sister has taken what must be the throne of an imaginary kingdom, her poise triumphant, her face utterly vacant, surrounded by a sea of stick-figure bodies. Kneeling in servitude to the shadow-born.

The drawing erases itself, but does not flake onto Mileena's comforter.

Instead it reorganizes into a draconic, blasé text, characters angular and desperate. She repeats it under her breath, the words all too familiar:

_Time is a Continuum. The Present is Deception. Your Past is Truth. Embrace Truth and your Future will be yours to claim. Take it from those who would keep it from you._

The words shatter into miniscule charcoal shards and begin swarming about the page like blackflies, like a creature attempting to break free from its two-dimensional cage. Within seconds the fragments converge, recombining into a single line of text in the center of the scroll, written in heavy cursive, reminiscent of stabbing rather than writing. She tries to read it.

But instead the sentence reads itself. In her voice.

_REMEMBER YOURSELF, MILEENA_

And the parchment wipes itself clean. Back to the way she found it.

Mileena growls furiously.

"Again? More of this 'remembering'? But I already know who I am!" She rolls up the scroll and hurls it across her room. Hears it _plink_ against a hard surface. "I _am_ Mileena! Does it think I forgot?"

She rolls off her bed, paces about the room in a near-frenzy.

"First Noob Saibot, then the visions, and now this scroll. They all tell me to remember who I am. As if they know me better than I know myself!"

She glances at the ice-glazed amulet resting on her bed, acknowledges that it has taught her how great the distance can be even between sisters. They cannot cross over into each other's dream lands. They can look like each other, act similarly, represent the pinnacle of symmetry, but cannot ever _be _each other.

That is a distance that cannot ever be transcended. To say nothing of strangers like Noob Saibot or illusions of garnet eyes.

"They think I am not doing it right. They want me to _remember_ instead of know who I already _am_."

She grabs bunches of her own hair in her hands, trying to concretize this line of thought, to make it the final word in this argument. All it does is make her want to soak her head in freezing water. Or wake up.

"You know what?" she says after a moment, turning to her teddy bear. "They want me to remember so badly? Fine. I will do it. I will try to 'remember'. Prove those who would doubt me wrong. We shall see who knows more about Mileena: them or Mileena herself!"

She turns to her mirror and meets her own feral glare, her face and figure barely visible in the dim glow of the single candle's light. She memorizes the features that she believes make her Mileena: her carmine eyes, those feline pupils dilated in the darkness, her flat nose, the way her hair tumbles down alongside her thin neck and onto her pale shoulders, and her Tarkatan fangs. That ambiguous non-smile.

The half-beauty. The half-beast.

A moment later, she breathes in. Closes her eyes.

And thinks back to yesterday:

To a saturated sunrise in deep vermillion, blossoming through her window. Cool hallways of the Edenian palace. Footsteps of handmaidens. Birdsongs. White cherry blossoms. Solo hide-and-seek-in-the-trees. Sparring monks. Sister. Jade. Questions. So many questions.

No answers.

Thinks back to a week ago:

Cool breeze; summer's terminus. Birdsongs in a minor key now. Sepia-tone scenery. Eyes without faces looking away. Sprinting along rooftops in the evening. Waiting. Watching. Sensation of a gaze on the back of her head. Sister's scolding. The palace is your home. Only the palace, Mileena.

Ten new dolls that night.

Thinks back to half a year ago.

Liquid landscapes swirl together. Monochromatic. Stop-motion life. The palace rendered new again. People watching her. Circling her. Sister standing beside her. Hand on her shoulder. You will be safe here. We are family. Everyone leaves, save Sister. One other remains.

Sister, who is that woman?

You will see.

No. I will _watch_.

Back to the present and Mileena is running trembling fingers through her hair, preparing to think back as far as she can, before that day when she first came to the palace, when she first met Jade, when everything looked, tasted, sounded, and smelled new. When she first belonged.

Mileena closes her eyes and thinks back to a year ago:

And sees white

that crackling field of static

again

hears forgotten persons howling

a Maelstrom, wailing

REMEMBER ME

they whoever they are

watch her from behind

unborn moments

drenched in the embryonic fluid

of an insectoid

sub-life

the abyss has no memory

of life before the trauma

only tears itself apart

and when it draws a body

it is immediately consumed by

the cicada-swarm of entropy

a girl casts her hands about in the water

blue word spills from her mouth

like vomit

SISTER! SISTER!

the sonic waves are razorblades

which cut her fingers into segments

they fall at her feet

she would see them

were she not already blind

her body splits in two

and her entrails break free

as if from a prison

fingers caress her hair

as she is about to be born again

REMEMBER ME

OR I WILL DO IT FOR YOU—

white

that crackling field of static

again

She opens her eyes.

Her reflection is terrified at the sight of her.

"I do not remember…?" She touches her face, trying to stave off a nascent numbness. Sensory hopelessness. "But it is supposed to be easy. These are my own memories, are they not? People are supposed to remember their own memories. But I…"

She knows now. Or thinks she does.

The animated scene on the scroll. The one Noob Saibot had tried to conjure for her before Jade interfered. They were not simply telling stories without context. Not weaving dreams for her to fret over.

They were remembering _for_ her.

"…No." Her stare is magnetically bound to her reflection, even as she slowly backs away. She trips on a stray doll, catches herself on her bed as she falls. "N-No. No, that is not right. That cannot be true. They are wrong. They are not me. They…they cannot tell me who I am!"

She feels for the amulet, but does not want to see it. Would rather tear out her own eyes than look upon it again. "These things…I must get them away from me. They are cursed. They wish ill upon me!"

And as Mileena snatches the amulet in her sleeve and feels around the room for the scroll, it dawns upon her: that insidious instinct, that sensory impulse which makes everything, including killing, a game to her…it refuses to let her be completely terrified by this. For it is a mystery, and therefore, e_nticing_.

Because now, it is not Sister who is hiding something important from Mileena, nor is it Jade. Somehow, Mileena is keeping secrets from herself.

_But if it's true, then who hid them there? _she thinks, her fingers caressing her skull, her lockbox, the key to which has suddenly vanished from her grasp.

First things first. She slips the scroll into her dress, then pushes aside her army of dolls so as to access her door. "Stay here, Teddy. I am going to return these horrid things to where they belong. Sister must not know that I took them. She must not know anything."

She stops halfway through the doorway and looks back into her room, swathed in a self-inflicted darkness.

"And if I see those eyes again, I will make the one who sees through them tell me what he knows. And then I will tear them from their sockets."

Mileena does not slam the door this time. Perfect tranquil fury.

Oblivious to the scratching against her window.


	6. Color of My Death

VI

_"And in that hall of memory,_

_I found a portrait of myself -_

_Painted in the color of my death"_

Poltergeists track their prey in the blind spots, where vision means nothing and instincts are beyond useless.

Mileena can see the silence: a velvet veil drifting in the air. The palace does not wear it well. Usually there is an echo of footsteps against ceramic tile, wind sailing down vacant corridors, granular laugh of guardsmen, sonar-cries of bats. The absence of atmosphere has transformed the Edenian palace into a twenty-acre marble catacomb.

But not Kitana's private hallway, and especially not the vibrant garden down below. Presently walking along the carpet, Mileena realizes that this place has an azure _cadence _to it, a higher order of way it wears the moonlight which filters in from the open roof above the courtyard, that rich aroma of the flowers, wafting like perfume… Mileena would do anything for the chance to take her sweet time absorbing this. But time has suddenly lost its sweetness, instead becoming bitter, acidic. If this had ever been a place in which to linger, it is not for her to know.

She presses herself up against Kitana's door. Listens for her absence through the oaken surface.

A sustained, cemetery silence. Mileena creeps inside. A harsh ocean draft laps at her bare feet.

No trace of the visions, nor anything indicating Kitana has been here since Mileena first snuck in to steal the amulet. Only a lighter shade of moon-glow, coming in through the lone window.

Mileena crosses the room, slides the amulet onto her sister's desk from between her sleeves. It _clacks _against the wooden surface, eager to escape her possession.

And, before she can think of anything else, her fingers automatically go to work arranging the string of pearls, so that they are placed the same way they were before she took the amulet. Mileena watches herself do this, amazed, wonders how her body can remember something her mind does not. Is this the 'muscle memory' she once heard Kitana speak of? No, this is something different. Frightening. Unnerved, she retracts her hands, hides them inside her long sleeves.

_I will not be fooled by my own fingers_, she thinks, and scurries back to the doorway.

But before she closes the door, something else strikes her. There is something disquieting about Kitana's bedroom, something she did not notice the first time. Not the _feng shui_, nor the lack of dolls, but the essence of its darkness. There are no shadows here, nor any candles that would ever cast them, and the moonlight only makes it worse by painting everything a sickly shade of pale blue. This is not shadow-casting – this is pathetic.

How could her sister be such an amateur?

_Darkness is not the same as shadows, Sister_. _Shadows dance. They move, play…they are alive. But you have no shadows. You do not even have light! _Mileena shakes her head, closes the door behind her as she leaves.

And is struck straight in the face by a tidal wave of fatigue. She realizes now just how late she has stayed up, running around the palace like this.

"I am going to be so sleepy tomorrow if I do not get to bed," Mileena yawns. "They will know for sure I was up and about just by looking at me. And then what will I say?"

But before she can imagine what that scene would look like, it finally hits her: there is something mystical about the palace's silence. It might be that she is tired enough that _anything_ would seem supernatural, but this…this is familiar. A living, breathing silence. Tense, too. Like the all-too-still moments between thunderclaps. Even now Mileena anticipates a bolt of lightning, an explosion of some kind.

And yet there is no reason for this. She has seen no visions since she left her room, since she stashed Sister's scroll back into its hiding spot. Not even that curious flicker of jade in the corner of her eye. So why does this stillness tremble? The goosebumps on her skin tell Mileena that this is not just her imagination: it is _instinct._

_Yes, going to bed sounds like a good idea._ _A _very _good idea._

She trots down the hall, feels the tug of her dress dragging along the carpet behind her like dead weight. She keeps one hand on the balcony's railing, its surface soaked with a tremulous film of pre-dawn mist. The water, however, is far colder than she had expected, its texture magnified. It compels her to stop in her tracks, watch the droplets crawl along her skin.

Curious, she sweeps her other hand along the railing.

And feels as though her whole arm has been submerged in the ocean.

_There is more here than meets the eye_, she thinks. _Far more. Is this…magic?_

She does not have time to speculate; the silence has become nearly deafening. That velvet sheen in the air begins to vibrate, the ground beneath her feet liquefying, breaking her balance. Her vision doubles as she grasps at the slicked railing. The veil of silence then licks at her eyes, burrows its way into her ears, and suddenly Mileena is overwhelmed by a horrible odor, like that of an acidic bile from the mouth of a reptilian creature.

She doubles over, about to vomit.

"Ah! No!" Mileena throws a hand over her fangs as she tries to dispel her delusion. Shakes her head violently, which is enough for her vision to clarify, for the world to become solid again. She takes a few breaths, regains her footing. "I…think I am sick," she moans, clutching her belly. "I must have eaten something bad. I should get out of here-"

But finds, as she sets her sight on the end of the hallway, that the carpet only snakes into a vortex of colors, whirlpooling in the space where the door should be. A transdimensional maw, opened wide to reveal a cosmic throat, like those that appear when Edenians travel between realms. It drinks in her gaze, enraptures Mileena to the brink of hypnosis, and injects something in her head that rapidly grows into a sour, puce throbbing. She squeals in pain, throws her hands over her head, and tries to look away from the black hole.

_What is this magic?! What is happening to me?!_

And then, a cobalt _noise_.

Piercing sound, like a needle dragged against glass. An electric thread woven through her frontal lobe.

Mileena cries out, desperately covers her ears, only to find that the sound is internal, pressure forcing outward, like hot air expanding against the walls of her skull. She tries to choke out a cry for help, but only manages an agonized gurgle. Tries to hum loudly, to drown out the sound, but the screeching consumes everything, even her unthought, unspoken words.

The white outline of a man's body emerges from the center of the void.

Mileena looks away before it can come into focus.

Or, rather, is _told _to look away, as if there is a ghostly hand cupping her chin, telling her: "Look here, Mileena, and you will be alright."

She sees her sister's garden, that secret courtyard. Shimmering, like an old painting, vividly restored. Everything is as she remembers it from the first time passing through: those blooming flowers, the lush, dew-soaked leaves, the vine-choked fountain. But they are all _reacting _to her presence, as if everything there has been planted, built, and arranged just for Mileena. Not like how she takes parts of the landscape, the palace, everyday sights, and makes them 'hers' – this garden _wants _to be hers. She is unable to grasp why, but within mere seconds, it makes everything go away. The pain in her stomach, the noise in her head, even the void at the other end of the hallway. Glancing back at it now, she realizes that the man, whoever he had been, never had the chance to become more than an outline.

"Did the garden just…" she whispers through panicked breaths. "Did it just make that all go away?"

Make _what _go away?

What pain? What noise? What void?

She cannot remember.

Her eyes wide with confusion, Mileena trots down the steps leading into Kitana's secret garden.

* * *

_I do not understand_, thinks Mileena, rubbing her eyes in disbelief, but even so, the garden does not fail to glow for her, as if alight with an artist's fresh brushstrokes. _This is Sister's secret place, and not mine. If I could not imagine what her dream world was like, how can…_

She cannot help but take in the sights, jaw open with bewilderment.

_How can I be seeing this? Unless it is only another trick._

To test this theory, Mileena approaches a row of tulips, traces a finger along the petals of one. Watches its purple hue stain her skin like wet paint. Convinced that she is dreaming, Mileena licks the color off her fingertip.

…_This tastes like honey. _She realizes that this cannot be a dream if the sensation is so real. _No, this is not a trick. This is magic. Or maybe even a giant painting! At least it is tasty._

Mileena thinks to retreat, toying with the idea that this illusion might be far more opaque than she believes. But she cannot deny that she feels strangely comfortable here.

_I cannot stay away from it. _Again, feeling the petals of the tulip, testing the taste of its color._ It is so wonderful. Like nothing I have seen before._

Finally, Mileena laughs. She does not question why, simply accepts her newfound joy. No memory of what happened in the hallway. No memory of the pain.

The garden parts for her as she walks through it, like a crowd melting out of her way, each individual leaf and flower brushing against her dress as if alive and amazed by her presence. Maybe this place, she thinks, does not realize that she is not Kitana. After all, Johnny Cage had been similarly fooled. She approaches the fountain in the center of the area, hidden past rows of daffodils, marigolds, overgrown ferns and leaves.

She scratches an itch on the back of her head. Like the tingle of someone else's vision, tracking her progress. Thinks she hears footsteps…but dismisses it as one of the palace's retainer girls.

…_Oh, is that the reason you were gathering flowers?…_

…_Yes, that is exactly it!..._

Mileena finds herself thinking of her conversation with her handmaiden. She had lied to her about her intentions, but now she is wondering… Can a lie, a trick, ever become true? Does it work that way? Mileena does not know, but now she realizes it does not matter, because a part of her _wants_ her past lie to become present truth.

And so she randomly plucks a long rose from one of the bushes beside the fountain. Accidentally pricks her finger on its thorns.

The rose, unlike all the others, is emerald.

The color melts onto her black-polished fingernails.

Licking the blood off her finger, Mileena sits down on the fountain's edge, tunes out the sound of its rushing waters. She appraises the rose, held carefully between her fingers, the unnatural coloration of the bloom. Aren't these supposed to be red, or white? Or perhaps she is simply lucky.

The texture of the rosebud, the color, the smell…they are the same as those of the wet grass. That jade sensation.

_That…_ she thinks, trying to smile. _That…is very funny._

She feels it again. That glow within her chest, which she has felt only once before, in the forest in the Edenian southlands. That unknown color that made her want to speak strange words to Jade upon finding her there, beaten, bloodied by Noob Saibot. That color that made Mileena want to help her, even though she had never felt that compulsion in all her life. That color which now makes her feel horrible for accusing Jade of wanting to kill her. Back then, she thought it was a bad feeling, but now knows it to be good. But what is the _word _for it?

And why, Mileena wonders, does that particular moment, when she felt worry for Jade, stand out? Why not her frustration at Sister, or her confusion at Jade's inconsistencies? And why Jade? Is it because Mileena still wants to know what a 'friend' is?

She trains her gaze along the length of the garden, now spread out before her like a watercolor panorama.

She hopes so. She hopes it is _just _because she wants to know what a friend is. Because now she finds it hard to remember anything else but that scene in the forest. The visions, the scroll, Johnny Cage…they are irrelevant, and a part of her hopes they are gone forever.

She closes her eyes. Twirls the rose between her fingers.

M_aybe I _am_ thinking too much about the visions_._ Maybe what Sister wants is for me to be happy._ _Perhaps I should not be going behind her back and accusing her of playing tricks on me. Sisters are supposed to look out for each other. Why did I not think to appreciate that?_

Mileena opens her eyes, afraid that she will fall asleep here and be discovered in the morning. She then looks up at her moon, to see if the world, in some ephemeral way, thinks the way she does.

Garnet eyes watching from the rooftop.

* * *

Do not look.

But we have to! They are right there!

We must look away, Mileena. They will not be real if we just ignore them.

No, they _are _real! We can feel them, watching us. Like insects on our skin.

By believing they are there, we are _making_ them real. All we have to do is think about something else.

Like what?

Like this place.

Sister's garden?

This is not just a garden, Mileena. This represents everything Sister has given us. Peace, happiness, family… If things had been different, we might not have been so lucky.

What things? And why not?

We cannot know that. But do we need to? Why can't we just try to be happy with what Sister has given us?

But what if we _want _to know how things could have been different?

We would never want that. And if we try to find out, we will risk losing everything we have right now.

We should be willing to take that risk!

You would have us turn away from everything our sister has given us! Just to satisfy your own curiosity!

It is not 'curiosity'! I do not care what this garden is trying to tell us: something important is being kept secret from us! Something bigger than Sister and Jade and Edenia!

You may not like what you will find.

"_We_ shall have to see," whispers Mileena to herself. "Won't we?"

* * *

The eyes do not retreat when she blinks. They have purpose here.

_Excellent, _thinks Mileena as she licks her fangs. The succulent taste of the game dances on her tongue.

"You wish to watch _me_?" She slides the rose into her dress, and in the same motion produces the single sai she remembered to take from her dresser. "Well, well…shall we dance, then?"

She squints, relaxes her muscles.

And pictures her body in a different place. Imagines that sweet sensation of dematerialization, of becoming illusory, unreal. She pictures herself existing in the space directly behind those eyes, so that she might see what they see. To inhabit the mind of another. Like crossing the realms.

The image coagulates in her mind's eye.

"Then let us dance!" she whispers as she teleports away from the garden in a magenta flash of light.

She rematerializes on the rooftop, several meters behind the silhouette. The revelation that the eyes really _do _have a body behind them would have startled her an hour ago – now, it only steels her resolve. Ironic that they have not yet noticed her disappearance.

And as she prepares to fling her sai, she feels it: that silver rush of adrenaline, molten mercury searing through her system. The thrill of the hunt.

How she has missed it.

She hurls her weapon with pinpoint accuracy at her target's shoulder, and imbibes in the wet sound of her blade piercing tough flesh.

And his feral roar – for that wounded sound is so unmistakably male – sends vermillion bolts through Mileena's limbs, turns her on, drowns her in the game. She pounces upon her prey, now rendered so real and _vulnerable_, and wraps herself around his writhing form. Mileena ignores his pitiful attempts at throwing her off and reaches for his eyeballs, panting at the thought of ripping them out and crushing them between her fingers.

Her hands accidentally find their way into his open mouth.

Fangs.

"_You!_" Mileena shrieks as she grabs the hilt of her sai, drags it down through her opponent's flesh, then pulls it out and stabs him repeatedly between the shoulder-blades. Each strike paints her hand in cold blood, until she kicks herself off of his back, gaining distance. He claws desperately at his fresh wounds, failing to suppress agonized shrieks. Mileena deepens her stance, points her sai at her target threateningly.

That unmistakable green blood drips off of its edge.

"I knew it! I _knew _it was one of _you_!" she hisses. "That fool Cage was right!"

Her opponent, swathed in a familiar black garb, ceases his struggling, regains control of his body. He turns around, guttural growl rumbling in his throat, and leers at her out of bright garnet.

"Not ssstupid after all." Reptile's voice unfurls from her darkest corridors of memory. Mileena does not remember when he had ever spoken, and even now, the way he pronounces his words indicate he is simply repeating noises he had once heard.

"I recognize you," says Mileena. She does not pounce just yet, instead takes in every detail of Reptile's countenance, every wrinkle in his sickly green complexion. Trying to fill the blank spots in her mind. "You have been following me. You will tell me why."

Silence. Acidic saliva seeps from between his tiny fangs, his gaping saurian mouth.

"You were in Sister's study," she continues. "You were that green light I thought I was seeing. You were spying on me when I was in her room."

His wordlessness is as good as a confession. But that stare…it is beyond comprehension. His is not a face that betrays emotion – Mileena knows what that is like. But Reptile is different. He might as well be a corpse. May well be, in fact.

"And you made me see those things!" Mileena shouts, drawing back her sai, poised to attack. Her irrepressible anger reflects on Reptile, who also assumes a fighting stance. "What kind of trick are you playing on me? How are you doing this?"

His jaw opens wide, flicks his thin tongue at her. A staccato hiss. His idea of a laugh.

"What do you _want_ from-"

He snaps out of existence before she can finish.

Translucent veil of mist where his body once was.

Mileena gasps, her stance loosening. The adrenaline in her veins turns to flat water. She looks around, listens for the echo of footsteps against tile, but…nothing.

Empty seconds go by.

And then she feels his presence from behind.

Too late to react. His arm shoots out from behind her and constricts around her neck, while the other wraps around her waist and pulls her close. Mileena yelps as Reptile cups her chin with a clawed hand, forces the back of her head against his armored chest. He breathes down into her hair, the stench summoning that urge to vomit she had suppressed earlier. She can see his eyes looking down into hers – they appear glossed over, false. Not his real eyes. Not the ones she thinks she remembers.

He wrenches the sai from her hand, and whispers into her ear: "We have come for _you_. Thisss should be obviousss."

"Who?" spits Mileena as she tries, in vain, to squirm from his grasp. "Who has come for me?"

He tightens his grip. "Thossse who take pity."

"Pity! Did Noob Saibot act out of _pity_ when he tried to scare me with his magic?" She feebly strikes his chest with the back of her head. "Was it _pity _that made him try to kill my sister's friend?"

Reptile says nothing, instead proceeds to drag Mileena toward the edge of the palace's roof. She tries to gain leverage with her neck, to reach his unarmored forearm with her fangs, but every move she makes only tautens his grasp.

"You are fools!" she squeals. "Why are you playing these tricks on me?!"

Reptile sharply hisses into her ear: "Not _you_! Wrong Mileena! Sssoft! Pitiful! Worthlessss! You are blind to thisss. But I…_I_ will make you sssee…"

Holding her still, Reptile stabs a long claw into Mileena's bare shoulder, then slowly tears downward. She wails in pain as blood seeps from her wound.

"Weak! Ssstupid girl! Mileena does not ssscream!" he roars. He then turns about, tries to dangle her over the edge of the roof. Mileena does not have to look down to know the distance between herself and the ground, but the idea of it sends a feral panic through her body nonetheless. She writhes against his grip, against the feeling that he could drop her at any moment he pleases.

"No!" she cries. "You said you wanted me alive! You would not dare kill me!"

She feels his grasp slacken, struggles to keep her feet on the rooftop's edge.

"If you really are Mileena," Reptile hisses, his tongue lapping at her ear, "and not the Queen'sss _pet_, then you will ssstop me."

His grasp loosens just enough for Mileena to sink her fangs deep into his forearm.

Reptile roars from behind, strikes the back of her head, but Mileena keeps her fangs anchored in his flesh, trying to find her footing on the roof. When she does, she immediately digs her elbow into his solar plexus, knocking him flat on his back. She spits shreds of his flesh back into his face before she can gag at the putrid flavor, then leaps at him, eager to claw out his throat.

Reptile rolls backward before she can fall upon him, then scrambles to his feet. Twirls her sai between his thick fingers to the rhythm of his own breaths.

"Not good enough!" he spits.

"Enough to kill you!" She sprints straight at him, and when Reptile slashes at her face with her own weapon, Mileena ducks under his swipe and digs her knuckles into his unprotected ribs. His body slackens, bends over - just enough time for Mileena to swipe the sai from his hand and, in one savage motion, sink it deep into the side of his neck

Then, a stillness.

Her body quivers, numb with fear, but Mileena cannot help but watch his eyes tremble, lose focus. The only expressive part of a face unable to show emotion, like Mileena's own. She knows the film which glosses Reptile's eyes now: fear. Fear of pain. Of death.

She leans in, studies her own reflection in his iris. "Such a _pity_…" she whispers, "that Noob Saibot will never hear you tell him how you died."

Mileena does not wait for him to respond before wrenching the sai deeper, if only to make his death more impossibly painful. He wears his own blood well, she decides.

"_Nobody_ tells me who I am!" she hisses, rabid drool seeping from between her fangs.

Reptile's face goes rigid, painted deep red under the crimson pre-dawn sky. Mileena trembles with glee, with vindication as his eyes glaze over, recede…

His pupils dilate.

And then fix on her.

"Fool."

Three claws puncture her side, just below her ribs.

Mileena yelps at the sudden pain. Grips onto his body in shock.

Then stares at him, her vision drowned in bewildered tears. But expression is beyond Reptile. He does not feel. If he did, he would not be able to show it. And yet somehow, he looks so sinisterly _knowing_.

She gags, shakes her head as if to say no. Weakly slaps his chest in protest.

"You have become pathetic," he says as he digs his claws deeper into her flesh. The pain is beyond her comprehension - she does not even feel it. Tries to tell him "stop", but no words come. She can already feel the blood seep down her legs, painting her dress crimson from beneath.

"Ack…ah!" She struggles for words, but cannot voice them. Consciousness flickers; her head falls against his chest.

Reptile grabs onto the neckline of her dress with both hands, lifts her over the edge of the rooftop, high above the courtyard.

"Do not die, Mileena," he says before releasing her. "We ssstill have need of you."

She tries to picture her sister before she hits the ground.

But that portrait is empty.

* * *

_A/N: So I did my homework and discovered that Reptile can in fact speak in his MK9 incarnation. Evidence to the contrary would be welcome/embarrassing._

_Also, thank you to everyone who has followed this story and offered feedback so far. This chapter underwent more revisions and rewrites than I'd planned; I hope it turned out well enough. :)_


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